Labour knew that immigrants were flooding into Britain in far higher numbers than anticipated by 2005, former home office minister John Denham admitted today.
Mr Denham, who is now permanent private secretary to Ed Miliband, the Labour Leader, said it was clear seven years ago that estimates for migrants were 'vastly wrong.'
The Labour MP for Southampton said: "We were advised about 15,000 and about that came to Southampton alone in the first 18 months."
Asked when he was first aware of the problem he added: "I think for me in really 2005. It was then it became clear that the estimates we relied on were vastly wrong. What we are acknowledging today is that far more people came in far more quickly than people anticipated."
The last Labour government oversaw a liberal immigration policy that led to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of workers from eastern Europe. In 2004 when the European Union expanded to take in Poland and other eastern states, the UK decided not to impose any restrictions on the arrival of citizens from those countries.
But Mr Denham refused to say there were too many immigrants coming to Britain.
The former chair of the Home Affairs Select Committe replied: "That's not the issue we've been talking about today. I think there is a debate and a discussion still to be had about the numbers overall that you have in a country."
Today Mr Miliband will admit in a speech that Labour got it wrong on immigration. The Labour leader will say that while middle-class households benefited from mass immigration to Britain their working class counterparts suffered.
Mr Miliband will admit that the influx of cheap workers had been good for the middle classes who wanted a new conservatory but bad for the British labourers who built them.
Thereby confirming that Labour is really the party of the privileged and the upper middle class.
In no small part because virtually the entire US media share the same ideologies as the BBC and the Guardian. At least the British MSM has some non-leftist voices.
Posted by: Ricky bin Ricardo (Abu Babaloo) ||
06/22/2012 9:42 Comments ||
Top||
#4
"If the people won't elect us, elect a new people."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
