The Conservatives do not have to apologise for allowing millions of migrants to move to the UK in the party’s final years in power, Dame Priti Patel has said.
The former Home Secretary who is one of six Tory MPs standing to replace Rishi Sunak as leader said it was “lazy” to suggest net migration was too high.
Figures show net migration – the difference between numbers arriving and leaving the UK – was 685,000 last year, and 764,000 in 2022.
The numbers arriving in the UK has been a political issue in parts of the country, and became a political issue during the riots earlier this month after the killing of three girls in Southport, Merseyside.
Asked if she felt legal migration was too high on Chopper’s Political Podcast, Patel said that it was “too lazy” to criticise high numbers arriving without adding context.
She told GBNews: “During the pandemic our borders were effectively closed. There was no travel. What about all those international students they came in after the pandemic? Are we saying that they should not have come into the country?”
Asked if she wanted to apologise for high migration under the Tory government, Patel said it was important to look at the context of the the pandemic which closed borders shortly after the 2019 election victory.
She said: “What did the Government choose to do, and I think this is the right thing to do. We absolutely made sure we gave the NHS the support that it needed through health and social care visas.
“Are we going to say that was the wrong thing to do? I mean, knock on doors and ask your listeners, your viewers.
“Would they say we should not have had more doctors and nurses? I think they would not.”
Patel also defended the points-based system which she had helped to introduce as Home Secretary. Anyone arriving in the UK had to be sponsored to get their visas and “a lot of these people are also high-rate taxpayers. So that context matters”.
She said: “If you don’t want so many people to come in to work in our country, then there’s a wider discussion to be had there about having a labour market strategy.”
She added: “I’ve spent years when I was in government as well, all colleagues lobbying for more seasonal agricultural workers, more lorry drivers, lorry drivers.
“Actually, DWP did some really good work on to actually ensure training schemes are in place. But again, it speaks to our economic needs and how we are actually going to grow the talent that people automatically serve we have domestically here.”
Patel denied to say that she wanted net migration to be under 100,000 a year, as her rival Mel Stride has pledged, insisting that Brexit had given ministers “the levers of control”.