Reducing net migration to below 100,000 is still the government's policy, Downing Street has insisted-despite the home secretary saying that there are no more targets.
Sajid Javid was asked if the government was “formally dumping” its long-standing measure of controlling net migration into the tens of thousands to which the home secretary replied that- “There are no targets in our White Paper, which sets out our approach to the future immigration system.
“That said, we are still very clear, as I have already set out, that we must continue to work to bring net migration down to more sustainable levels.”
However, Downing Street has hit back, claiming that the 100,000 target is still in place.
Theresa May's official spokesman said- “Sustainable levels is the tens of thousands - it’s included within the manifesto on which the government was elected.”
The latest figures estimate that to June 2018, net migration to the UK was 273,000.
Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a free think-tank in January, dubbed the UK's approach to immigration policy "economically damaging" and "too restrictive" when applied to high-skilled workers.
The IEA said that as well as scrapping a target for net migration, the government should also remove caps on visas for the high-skilled and restrictions for working foreign students.
