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Immigration Controls

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. The Conservatives are a party that went into the general election with a manifesto commitment to limit our asylum quota and people's ability to come here and claim asylum. I do not know whether that is still its policy, as the hon. Member for Ashford did not refer to it today, but that is a fundamentally different issue from controlling the rest of migration. As we set out in our draft earned citizenship Bill in July, we are making major changes to what we expect of migrants before they can progress to British citizenship. That was the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead referred to. There will no longer be an automatic right to stay here after five years. We have listened to the British people, and the message is clear: they want newcomers to speak English, work hard and play by the rules. Those changes do not make Britain anti-foreigner—far from it. They reassert the value of Britishness and rightly reaffirm that the privilege of British citizenship should be earned.