The prime minister gave a speech in Downing Street on Monday, 12 May, announcing that every area of the UK’s ‘broken’ immigration system will be tightened.

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was left red-faced during Monday morning’s (12 May) press conference at Downing Street as he discussed the country’s immigration system and his tough new measures that will see a “significant” reduction.

While discussing what Labour’s new White Paper will mean, the leader of the party was asked by Robert Peston from ITV: “You know that the countries that want to grow are in a global race for top talent. Your number one priority is growth, haven’t you shot yourself in the foot by insisting that those who want to be citizens now have to live here twice as long as those who want to be American citizens?”

He then added: “And if I may, we’ve just heard that there will be a 90-day massive reduction in the tariffs that China and America are imposing on each other. Are you relieved that these temporarily they’ve laid down there economic arms?”

Looking a little flustered, he replied: “On the growth question I do think this is worth taking some time on because the theory that higher migration numbers necessarily leads to higher growth has been tested in the last four years. So we’ve had the highest net rate migration when the last government lost control to nearly one million and stagnant growth, so that link doesn’t hold on that evidence.

“The second thing is that this white paper is not just the white paper on immigration it’s also a white paper that deals with skills and training and one of the reasons that we’ve had stagnant growth, in my view, for years is because we’ve under invested chronically in skills and growth. So by putting skills and growth into the same plan as migration, which is something business have been asking for for years, you actually answer the growth question as well.”