This paper argues that to enjoy public confidence, the Government’s immigration policy needs to be led by three main principles:  popular benefit, a focus on short-term migration and real control

There was no need for further liberalisation of immigration rules, outside of niche areas such as agriculture and social care, even before Thursday’s announcement of record net immigration.

Employers rather than complaining about labour shortages should plan their future employment needs, use the work visa system more efficiently and, better still, raise their investment in training, currently the lowest in Europe for comparable countries. Over time we should in fact raise the skill/pay threshold for work visas.

Compassionate control is needed to deal with small boats, including the ability to detain and deport which is too often thwarted by the European Convention on Human Rights. Once the flow of illegal entry by boat has been stopped the Government should announce an annual quota of refugees to be selected from resettlement camps and one-off schemes like that for Ukraine

More relaxed attitudes to legal immigration since the end of free movement are unlikely to last long, and to be competitive at the next election, and win back some of the red wall, the Government needs a breakthrough on stopping Channel boats and some fine tuning of the post-Brexit legal migration system.