Immigration minister Seema Malhotra has been on the morning round ahead of migration statistics coming in at 9:30 a.m. Labour is trying to talk up a pledge to ban rule-flouting employers from hiring from overseas. Presenters were more keen to talk about the lack of actual progress…
On LBC Nick Ferrari pointed out that Labour’s manifesto promise and constantly-repeated pledge to “end asylum hotels, saving the taxpayer billions of pounds” has been broken. Only seven migrant hotels have been closed while 14 new ones have opened. Malhotra tried to argue it was the other way round on BBC Breakfast before getting sternly corrected…
Malhotra admitted the manifesto promise had been broken:
“Yes indeed we do need to make sure that we are bringing hotel use down and the way we’ve got to do that, the way we’ve got to tackle the unprecedented strain that our system has been under where we saw actually in the first six months of this year an increase in eight of 18% of those who were arriving on small boats compared to last year is that we have a plan for reducing numbers coming here.”
She declined to say when hotels will start closing or what net migration figure Labour thinks is too high. You wouldn’t want to have to live up to clear expectations…
Speaking to Sky News off the back of Rachel Reeves’ Air Passenger Duty hike, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary said:
“Labour is dependent on those Red Wall seats, and yet every move she makes poisons economic growth and damages the UK’s recovery… it’s the Chancellor who stumbles from policy misstep to policy misstep… I think her policy decisions are incredibly stupid.”