Suella Braverman to rebuff cabinet calls for easing of visa rules
Thousands of Britons should be trained to drive trucks, work in the meat industry and gather crops rather than filling vacancies with foreign workers, Suella Braverman will tell Conservative activists on Monday.
In an intervention that will be seen as a rebuff to cabinet colleagues calling for an easing of visa rules to boost economic growth, the home secretary will say there is no good reason to bring in overseas workers to compensate for shortages in the haulage, butchering or farming industries.
Her speech comes amid a growing row within the cabinet and the Conservative party over net migration, as Rishi Sunak braces for a record increase in net migration figures this month. Reports have claimed that the figure could reach close to 1 million, from a record-breaking level of 504,000 last year.
While the prime minister and Braverman have reiterated calls for net migration to be reduced in the long term to the tens of thousands, ministers including the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, and the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, have been keen to stress the economic benefits of issuing visas for workers in key sectors and students.
Braverman will tell the National Conservatism conference on Monday that she campaigned for Brexit so that the government could control migration.
“We need to get overall immigration numbers down. And we mustn’t forget how to do things for ourselves,” she will say.
“There is no good reason why we can’t train up enough HGV drivers, butchers or fruit pickers. Brexit enables us to build a high-skilled, high-wage economy that is less dependent on low-skilled foreign labour.”
The National Conservatism conference, a three-day event in Westminster beginning on Monday, has been organised by a US-based thinktank to
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