Opposition renews demand for cutting immigration in UK

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

London, Nov 2 (UNI) The opposition has renewed its pledge to cut significantly the number of new immigrants from the current level of about 200,000 a year in Britain.

Criticising the government policy on immigration, Tory leader David Cameron repeated his call for an annual ceiling on the number of people coming to the country from outside the European Union.

He claimed that the confusion this week about the number of foreign workers provided the evidence of an ''unmistakable whiff of decay'' about the government.

''It is important to control the immigration, rather than throw your hands up in the air and sort of panic, like the Government has done this week, and start having to promise more money,'' he said.

His comments came as a survey revealed that most people in Britain regarded the Polish as more diligent than the British, with 67 per cent believing that Poles worked harder.

The survey of 1,000 people found that foreign nationals had taken all the new jobs in the economy. The government admitted the number of Britons in work had fallen in the past two years as they were replaced by 540,000 people from abroad.

''The latest shambles over immigration shows exactly why we need a new government,'' The Independent quoted Mr Cameroon as saying.

He argued that prime minister Gordon Brown could not provide the change the country needs because he was ''the architect of Labour's failure''.

Chairman of the left-wing think-tank, Compass, Neal Lawson said immigration offered an opportunity to improve public services. It questioned the government's plan to bring in a points-based system to assess economic migrants.

He said, ''The Government cannot bank the national economic benefits of immigration without putting more back to address overstretched public services like housing, transport and health." UNI

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