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Points-Based Immigration System

This will not make me universally popular, but I should say that since I was asked to take up this role, I have consistently said that we have to strike a balance in immigration reform between the economic contribution that we know migration brings and the wider impact that we must know that migration has on wider public services. That is the balance that we seek to strike in introducing the points system. We have to try to undertake that balancing act on the basis not of anecdote but of evidence. That is why we have the migration advisory committee, an independent committee set up to tell the Government where in the economy we need migration—and, crucially, where we do not—and why we have set up alongside it the Migration Impact Forum, which is not a great name for an important group of people. It is made up of front-line public service managers from all over the United Kingdom who are able to marshal and analyse the evidence on the wider impact of migration. It is important that that evidence should be published and transparent so that the public can see what evidence Ministers are balancing when they come to a decision about how many points a newcomer needs to come to this country. We are explicitly seeking to recognise the fact that both sides of the debate need to be taken into account.