Sunak under fresh pressure on immigration as poll suggests two thirds of Tory members want to leave ECHR – UK politics live | Politics

The New Conservatives, the group of ‘red wall’ Tories calling for tighter controls on immigration, have published policy document giving details of their plan. Unusually, it’s a 12-point one, not a 10-point one.

It does not seem to be availabe online yet, and so here it is.

1) Close the temporary schemes that grant eligibility for worker visas to ‘care workers’ and ‘senior care workers’. This policy will reduce visas granted by 117,000 between those workers and their dependants, leading to a reduction in ‘long-term inward migration’ of 82,000.

2) Raise the main skilled work visa salary threshold to £38,000 per annum. This could reduce LTIM [long-term immigration] by 54,000 migrants per year.

3) Extend the closure of the student dependent route, which allows full access to the job market and is not subject to skill or salary thresholds, to students enrolled on one-year research master’s degrees. Combined with the government’s existing proposal, this could lead to a reduction in LTIM of around 75,000.

4) Close the graduate route to students, so as to stop students staying in the UK after graduating for up to two years without a job offer. This should lead to a reduction of around 50,000 in LTIM per year.

5) Reserve university study visas for the brightest international students by excluding the poorest performing universities from eligibility criteria. This could lead to a reduction of 49,000 from LTIM.

6) Continue to monitor the reduction in visa applications under the humanitarian schemes and introduce caps on future humanitarian schemes should the predicted 168,000 reductions not be realised.

7) Rapidly pass and implement the provisions of the illegal migration bill, leading to a reduction of at least 35,000 from LTIM.

8) Cap the number of refugees legally accepted for resettlement in the UK at 20,000.

9) Raise the minimum combined income threshold to £26,200 for sponsoring a spouse and raise the minimum language requirement to B1 (intermediate level). This should lead to an estimated 20,000 reduction in LTIM.

10) Make the migration advisory committee report on the effect of migration on housing and public services, not just the jobs market, by treating future demand on a par with labour requirements in all studies.

11) Cap the amount of social housing that councils can give to non-UK nationals at five percent until the number of British families waiting for housing clears.

12) Raise the immigration health surcharge to £2,700 per person, per year.

Some of these ideas are similar to ideas that Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has been arguing for within government. And some would just build on initiatives the government is already taking. For example, the illegal migration bill says there should be a cap on the number of refugees admitted to the UK every year. The New Conservatives say the cap should be set at 20,000.

According to the Home Office, the UK offered protection to 23,841 people coming to the country in 2022.

to 23,841 people

Good morning. According to the main political write-through in the Sunday Times yesterday, Rishi Sunak feels life isn’t treating him fairly. Tim Shipman and Tom Calver wrote:

At Winchester, Oxford, Stanford, Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, Sunak was told that if he worked hard and solved problems, he would succeed in life. But political reward is more hard won. One cabinet minister put it this way: “In his mind the deal he struck with the universe is not working out. He’s very clever, but he knows that with cleverness comes responsibility to graft … But if you work hard and do the right thing, the universe will reward you — and in his mind at the moment the universe is not keeping its side of the bargain.”

Shipman and Calver aren’t saying that Sunak himself has been moaning about cosmic forces conspiring against him; they are just quoting someone trying to sum up his state of mind. But if Sunak does privately believe that the universe has lined up with Boris Johnson in a conspiracy to do him in, then he will find two pieces of fresh evidence for that in the news this morning, both relating to immigration.

First, a group called the New Conservatives, around 25 “red wall” Tory MPs, are publishing plans designed to get net migration down to below 226,000 by the time of the next election. As Rajeev Syal reports, their ideas go beyond what the government is already doing. And their headline goal, which revives the promise in the Conservatives’s 2019 manifesto, serves as a rebuke to Sunak, because it highlights his recent decision to in effect abandon that target (or redefine it, to be more precise, but in practice that amounts to the same thing).

Second, the ConservativeHome website this morning has published a survey of Tory members suggesting that more than two thirds of them want the UK to leave the European convention on human rights. ConHome surveys are seen as a reliable guide to opinion in the party, and this creates another headache for Sunak. He has not ruled out leaving the convention. But unlike Suella Braverman, the home secretary, he has no enthusiasm for the proposition which, were it to be tried, might well split his party, and torpedo the UK’s reputation internationally.

In his write-up of the survey, Paul Goodman, the ConservativeHome editor, said he thinks Sunak may be forced into promising a “changed relationship” with the European court of human rights in the next Tory manifesto. He says:

I’ve suspected for some time that Rishi Sunak may be propelled into promising a changed relationship with the court during the run-up to the next election.

But even if he doesn’t, the scale of refugee movement in a globalised world, let alone that of illegal immigration, is likely to move European centre-right parties in that direction during the years and decades ahead.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10.30am: The high court resumes hearing the government’s legal challenge against the Covid inquiry’s demand to see unredacted WhatsApp messages from ministers.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

12.30pm: Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, holds a phone-in on LBC.

1pm: Lee Anderson, the Conservative party deputy chairman and a member of the New Conservatives, speaks at a press conference about the group’s call for tighter immigration controls.

After 1pm (UK time): James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, addresses a meeting of the EU-UK parliamentary partnership assembly in Brussels.

2.30pm: Suella Braverman, the home secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

After 3pm: Peers resume their report stage debate on the illegal migration bill.

After 3.30pm: MPs debate the economic activity of public bodies (overseas matters) bill, which is intended to stop councils implementing boycotts of Israel.

4pm: Amanda Pritchard, the NHS England chief executive, gives evidence to the Commons public accounts committee.

And at some point today the Cabinet Office will publish a written ministerial statement about Sue Gray with the title “Prima facie breach of the civil service code by the former second permanent secretary for the union and the constitution”.

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