Cameron claims EU immigration to be at ‘reasonable level’ after rules eased

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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Prime Minister David Cameron has claimed on Monday immigration from Romania and Bulgaria to Britain is at “reasonable level” after easing down of immigration rules on January 1, without referring to any official statistics.

The statement came as around 70 Tory MPs are in favor of an amendment to the immigration bill calling for work restrictions to be reinstated on migrants from the two east European countries until the end of 2018.

However, Mr. Cameron has urged Tory MPs not to endanger his plans to restrict immigration, sharing their “frustration” over the immigration bill.

Mr. Cameron has said the Immigration Bill contained “sensible” measures intended to lower the annual net migration.

The Prime Minister has told: “I completely understand and in many ways share the frustrations of colleagues who would like us to go further.

“We extended the transitional controls from five years to seven years. Those seven years are now up. We are not allowed under the current rules to extend them further.

“We paused the Bill over Christmas and now I think we can see, at the start of the year, so far there looks to be a reasonable level of migration.

“I hope we can make progress with the Bill because it does so many other good things.”

Later at Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) conference in central London,  Mr. Cameron has explained he had no access to any official or unofficial statistics and his comments were purely based on the calculations from what he had “read, seen and heard” over the past few weeks.

However, the UK Independence Party criticised his explanations by saying they were based on “zero evidence”.

Ministers are attempting to control the rebellion by offering to support a separate amendment that would require the Home Office to conduct statutory reports on the impact of migration on the British labour market.

Still the Tories’ promised target to cut the net migration to “tens of thousands” by 2015 seems doubtful to be met.

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