Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to cut net migration while Prime Minister Rishi Sunak vowed to boost community care in his first major health offer of the election campaign.
Sir Keir vowed to “bring immigration numbers down” by cracking down on “bad bosses” and linking work visas to training domestic workers, but has refused to set a specific target.
Meanwhile, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has declined to rule out offshoring the processing of asylum claims.
“Read my lips—I will bring immigration numbers down,” he said.
The Labour leader said he will “ban bad bosses,” who breach labour market rules—including by underpaying workers—from recruiting from abroad.
Labour will also make sectors applying for foreign worker visas train British workers first, the report said.
However, Sir Keir Starmer refused to specify a target level of migration or a timeframe.
Touring broadcasting studios on Sunday, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper took a shot at the Tories, telling the BBC’s “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg” programme Labour is refusing to set an immigration target partly because “every time the Conservatives have done this, frankly, then they have just ended up being totally all over the place, ripping it up, and discredited the whole system.”
Ms. Cooper said another reason her party is staying away from a target is the fluctuation of immigration because of global events.
“So, for example, the pandemic means the net migration figures, of course, fell, but the homes for Ukraine visa rightly meant that the figures increased because of the war in Ukraine,” she said.
The shadow home secretary said her party would create a border security command “to clear the backlog and to end asylum hotel use, and to put another new returns and enforcement unit in place to actually get the proper returns where people have no right to be here.”
Ms. Cooper said Labour would look at what works.
“For example, the Dublin agreement did mean that, under that scheme, some people were returned to France or to Germany or other countries,” she said.
When asked if Labour would send asylum seekers who are stuck in the system to another country to have their claims processed, Ms. Cooper said: “That’s certainly what used to happen as part of the Dublin scheme and we look at what works.”
Labour’s tough talk on migration came as Sir Keir is seeking to shift the focus away from the Diane Abbott row that has dogged his campaign, but it could risk inflaming tensions with the Labour left.
A report in The Sunday Times that a number of left-wingers including Ms. Abbott have been offered peerages in return for quitting could also reignite the infighting.
They have been told they would be elevated to the Lords if they made way for allies of the leadership team in their seats, according to the newspaper.
Lifelong Learning
Labour has also pledged to help upskill the workforce, delivering “lifelong learning with more training places for young people and opportunities for adults to learn new skills.”The party said it will replace the Conservatives’ Apprenticeships Levy with a more flexible Growth and Skills Levy, which is a variation of the existing Apprenticeships Levy that can be used on a “greater range of training courses.”
Tories Pledge More Community Care
The prime minister, meanwhile, is seeking to fire up his campaign with a promise to boost community care.A hundred new GP surgeries and 50 community diagnostic centres would be built were he to remain in No. 10, funded by slashing the number of NHS managers, the Tories said.
They pledged to expand their Pharmacy First scheme, which allows patients to access some treatments via their pharmacy without having seen a GP first.
Mr. Sunak said the proposals would make it “quicker, easier, and more convenient for patients to receive the care they need and help to relieve pressure on hospital services.”
Appearing on Sky News’s “Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips” programme, Health Secretary Victoria Atkins said: “We’re doing this with record numbers of doctors, nurses, and staff in the NHS. We’re rolling out technology across the NHS to help both staff and patients.
Ms. Atkins said the policy will “bring care closer to us as patients” and is “also good for pharmacists because we want to use these highly-skilled professionals to the top of their licence.”
Asked when the Conservatives wanted to free up 20 million appointments, Ms Atkins replied: “By the end of the next Parliament.”
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said the Conservatives have cut 1,700 GPs since 2016, adding: “Patients are finding it harder than ever before to see a GP, so why would they trust this latest empty promise?”
The Liberal Democrats have also attacked the Tories’ record on health.
Sir Ed Davey’s party promised to reverse £1 billion in Conservative cuts to the Public Health Grant, which provides local authorities with funding for public health projects.
The Lib Dems said they would fund the investment into local services through a crackdown on tax evasion.
Sir Keir and Mr. Sunak appear to be taking a day off from touring the country on Sunday after a busy week of campaigning culminating in the launch of their parties’ battle buses on Saturday.
North of the border, First Minister John Swinney will urge people to “vote SNP to put Scotland’s interests first” as he formally launches the party’s General Election campaign in Glasgow.
