The Prime Minister's speech to the Confederation of British Industry on 27th April 2004 was his first major speech on immigration. He boiled down the case for encouraging mass immigration to the UK to 'four facts'. According to a new report by Anthony Browne for Civitas, all the facts are either outright misleading, or at best highly contentious.

Claim 1: Mr Blair said that there are half a million vacancies in our job market, and our strong and growing economy needs migration to fill these vacancies.

The counter-argument: The UK has 591,500 vacancies, but there are 3.49 million adults of working age not working who want a job - or very nearly six people (5.89) out of work wanting a job for every single vacancy.

Claim 2: Mr Blair claimed that the movement of people and labour into and out of the UK is, and always has been, absolutely essential to our economy.

The counter-argument: But he took no account of the offsetting disadvantages of immigration. In particular, he disregarded the impact on unskilled workers. The author quotes Lord Richard Layard, the co-director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, and the mastermind of Labour's welfare to work programme:

'There is a huge amount of evidence that any increase in the number of unskilled workers lowers unskilled wages and increases the unskilled unemployment rate. If we are concerned about fairness, we ought not to ignore these facts. Employers gain from unskilled immigration. The unskilled do not.'

Claim 3: Mr Blair claimed the UK is already highly selective about who is allowed in to the UK to work, study or settle.

The counter-argument: On the contrary, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand all have complex, tightly upheld, immigration procedures that require would-be immigrants to prove - among other things - that they are not criminals and do not have diseases that will make them a threat to public health or a burden on the health system. In contrast, despite the fact that immigration has tripled the rate of HIV and doubled the rate of TB in Britain, the UK has no health tests for would be immigrants. In fact, the UK is now the only country in the world of primary immigration, apart from Israel, that does not select between the seriously sick and the healthy.

Claim 4: According to Mr Blair, in international terms, the UK is not a particularly high migration country.

The counter-argument: Mr Blair points out that in the UK, only 8 % of the work force is foreign born, compared to 15 % in the US and 25 % in Australia. He doesn't point out that the US is only 12 % as densely populated as the UK, and Australia 1 %. In contrast to the UK, they are empty continents and so can accept higher migration without the same quality of life and housing impacts.

Click here for the report (PDF)

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