Labour: Govt's arbitrary targets for migration don't work

ODN

Shadow City Minister Tulip Siddiq says the Labour Party wants to change the threshold for migration and would ask the Migration Advisory Committee to make an assessment on the needs of the country. Report by Alibhaiz. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn

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00:00 We've looked at the migration figures and the point is there's got to be something in

00:05 the system that deals with it because we're not dealing with it at the moment.

00:08 We don't think arbitrary targets actually work.

00:10 I mean year after year the government's put targets in and they haven't met them.

00:15 Boris Johnson, David Cameron, they all had targets, none of them were met.

00:19 What we've got to do is make more of a sophisticated analysis of what we do and that has to address

00:24 the root causes of the problem in the first place.

00:27 So the reason why we don't want to set a target year to year is because you can't account

00:31 for unexpected events.

00:33 For example, the pandemic or for example the war in Ukraine.

00:36 So for us it's about meeting the needs of the economy but also addressing the root causes

00:41 as I say about skills shortages, the talent pool and what jobs need people.

00:46 What we want to do is we do want to change the threshold in terms of wages.

00:50 We don't accept arbitrary figure that's been plucked out as I say but what we would do

00:55 is there's an independent migration committee, we would ask them to look at it and make an

01:00 assessment that something's got to be done about this threshold because it hasn't been

01:03 changed in years and it doesn't take into account important things.

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