(Bloomberg) -- UK opposition leader Kemi Badenoch said her Conservative Party would introduce a cap on migrant numbers if elected, conceding that the previous Tory government failed to deliver on its promise to reduce numbers.
Badenoch also said her party would “review every policy, treaty and part of our legal framework” including the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act. She said the Tories would also review the route to gaining a British passport, and migrants’ access to public services and welfare.
Her comments in a speech in London came a day before official statistics are published on Thursday that are likely to show net migration falling in the 12 months to June — partly due to policies introduced by the Tories when Rishi Sunak was prime minister, including blocking many migrant students and workers from bringing family members with them.
The impact of those policies, however, came too late to be seen before July’s general election, in which the Conservatives slumped to an historic defeat to Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. Immigration was prominent in the vote, as Sunak and the Tories failed to deliver on promises to bring down net migration.
Net arrivals soared to a record 764,000 in 2022, leading many former Conservative voters to defect to the anti-immigration Reform UK party.
Immigration has remained near the top of the political agenda, as concerns around the number of arrivals and the pressure they are putting on public services escalated into far-right violence over the summer. Hotels housing asylum-seekers, and other businesses and charities offering services to migrants, were targeted by rioters and suffered arson attacks and vandalism.
“I want to rebuild the trust between the Conservative Party and the British people,” Badenoch said. “I know we have got a lot of work to do, but the first step is to accept that mistakes were made, and to learn from them.”
In a recognition that the Conservatives had lost votes to Reform in the election, both Badenoch and rival Robert Jenrick focused on immigration in their bids to become Tory leader. Badenoch’s promise to review the ECHR and how it impacts British immigration policy is likely a nod to Jenrick’s campaign pledge to withdraw the UK from the convention if he became prime minister.
Still, Badenoch has repeatedly said leaving the ECHR would not be a “silver bullet” to reducing migrant numbers.
On Wednesday, Badenoch declined to say where she would set the migration cap. Previous attempts by the Conservatives to limit migration have not gone well — in 2019 they abandoned ex-premier David Cameron’s pledge to bring net migration down to the “tens of thousands,” and the party has struggled to show how it would counter the economic damage of capping numbers.
“What we will do now is explain how you will get to those numbers, not just stating the numbers,” Badenoch said, adding that her focus would be people arriving to do low-income jobs.
The Health and Care Visa route, a policy initiated by the last Conservative government to address huge vacancies in the social care sector, has accounted for a significant rise in migration. Badenoch did not expand on how she would reduce the care sector’s dependence on low income migrants.
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