Minister signals rift among top Tories over migration figures

BRITAIN needs immigration to rise “now and again,” a minister said today in what appeared to be a clash with Home Secretary Suella Braverman.

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Trade minister Nigel Huddleston stressed there would “always be peaks and troughs” in levels of immigration, with figures next week expected to show a surge in arrivals to the UK.

Some estimates suggest annual net migration, immigration minus emigration, could hit 700,000 or more, up from just over 500,000 in the year to June 2022, despite Brexiteers’ claims that quitting the EU would allow the Government to take back control of Britain’s borders. In what appeared to be an attempt to pre-empt this rise in immigration, Mr Huddleston told Times Radio: “For certain periods of time, sometimes it goes up, sometimes it goes down.

“The key thing is having control ourselves and certainly in the long term we need immigration to come down because that is what has been causing some challenges in local areas for a long period of time. But every now and again we also need more people to come into the country.”