“Mistakes were made by the previous government,” a shadow cabinet minister has said, after Kemi Badenoch appeared to slap down her own shadow foreign secretary over immigration figures.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp told Sky News that he and Mrs Badenoch have been “completely honest” about errors made by their predecessors, and immigration numbers were “far too high”.
On Thursday, party leader Mrs Badenoch seemed to rebuke Dame Priti Patel after she declined to apologise for record-high immigration figures.
Appearing on The Sun’s Never Mind The Ballots programme on Thursday, the shadow foreign secretary said it was “totally distortionary” to suggest the previous government had “thrown open our borders” to the rest of the world.
But later on Thursday, a spokesman for Mrs Badenoch appeared to rebuke Dame Priti, saying the Conservative Party under her leadership “will tell the truth about the mistakes we made”.
The spokesman said: “While the last Conservative government may have tried to control numbers, we did not deliver.”
Asked whether Mrs Badenoch’s comments were a “slap down”, Mr Philp told Sky News on Friday: “The truth is, as Kemi has said and as I have said repeatedly, mistakes were made by the previous government.
“Kemi and I have been completely honest about that. We’ve told the truth. Mistakes were made.
“Those numbers were far too high, far too high. We’ve said if we get back into office, we will have a hard, legally-binding cap on the number of visas that are issued to get those numbers right down.
Dame Priti Patel on Thursday declined to apologise for record-high immigration figures (PA)
“Now we haven’t yet said what the number is going to be, we will obviously before the next election say that, but it will be a lot, lot lower than the numbers we’ve seen in recent years.”
Dame Priti clarified her comments later on Thursday and said the UK’s immigration system was “not fit for purpose” and she was “not happy about the high numbers while the Conservatives were in government”.
She added: “Our party is now under new leadership and it is important we learn from our mistakes and how we can do things better.
“As a former home secretary, I have seen no interest whatsoever from any other political parties in understanding our system or learning these lessons.
“I’m pleased the leader of the Opposition and shadow home secretary have said they will develop a new plan on how to control immigration, including a hard cap on visas.
“This is what is needed. More words will not solve the problem.”
Official figures show net migration has soared since the UK left the EU in January 2020, reaching a record high of 903,000 in the year to June 2023 before falling back slightly to 728,000 in the following year.