Letter to Daily Telegraph published without final paragraph on Friday 19^th June 2020

Your admonishment of the Oxford dons agitating against our country’s imperial past and Cecil Rhodes in particular is well deserved. One should ask what specifically is it that they and the street mobs they are aligned with object to in Rhodes’s life.

He was Prime Minister of Cape Colony in the 1890’s and brought in the common electoral roll well before the Boer War started in 1899, declaring that the only criteria for admission to the roll was income and education. Not many black Africans qualified at the time it is
true, but some did. It was the principle which mattered and the common roll provision was carried into the South Africa Constitution Act of 1909 long after Rhodes had died in 1902 as the Boer War ended.

The colour blind stipulation is also built into the qualifications for the award of Rhodes Scholarships which are awarded annually to citizens of all the individual countries of the then British Empire plus the United States of America, to the great benefit of the Scholars and Oxford University, to which Rhodes gave a second huge bequest. None of Rhodes’s fortune had anything to do with slavery which in any case had been abolished in the British Empire long before he was born.

Rhodes Scholarships are arguably the most generous and far-seeing of any university private provision in the whole world. It is much to be regretted that not one of the several hundred winners still alive appear to have seen fit spring to Rhodes’s defence.

Letter to Daily Telegraph published on 9th December 2015

Lord Lexden (Dec 8th) calls on the Government “to build on a scale that the nation needs” with the implication that the current building rate of around 115,000 is insufficient for our needs. But which nation is Lord Lexden referring to?

The nation of resident British citizens has a natural increase of around 200,000 per year which corresponds to about 85,000 new houses per year. Allowing for replacement housing, 115,000 is clearly sufficient for British needs.

The much larger figures of 200-250,000 houses, continually referred to by planners and builders, are based on the National Statistical Office assumption that net immigration will continue indefinitely at more than a million every five years. (It was 336,000 in the year to the end of September.) Yet if Britain votes to leave the EU, which continued immigration on this scale makes all the more likely, this number will come whistling down. In any case, it is surely morally wrong to break into the precious English landscape with houses, roads, and pylons to accommodate literally millions of people from other countries which are much less densely populated than ours.

The public have been treated to the unedifying spectacle of three party leaders squabbling in TV shows about bonbons of one or two billion pounds while the country is running an internal deficit of £170 Bn per annum, which is being borrowed from foreign investors at about £14 Bn per month, all of which has to be paid back.

As the LibDems are the beneficiaries of the “performance” of their leader in these debates, it will repay every voter to look at their policies carefully, particularly on immigration and defence, which has not so far figured very much in the election.

On immigration the LibDems want to give an amnesty to unknown numbers of illegal immigrants, which the Home Office estimates place anywhere between 600,000 and one million.  Given the history of systematic underestimation of immigration, the figure is more likely to be a million or even more.

Given that current policy allows each granted asylum seeker the right to bring in at least one claimed dependant, Clegg’s policy, which he apparently defended yesterday, May 3rd, as a courageous act of equity to (yes you have guessed it) asylum seekers who have all been at the mercy of evil people smugglers, will end up by doubling or tripling this figure.

Hasn’t Clegg ever gone to Calais and spoken to the French authorities there or even our own Home Office?  Talk of a few dozen people smugglers is throwing dust in the eyes of the British people.  You have to ask why do LibDems and their allies have such a regard for immigrants that they want another two million or more of them in our country on top of the current annual flow of 500,000?  England, where overwhelmingly they settle is already the most densely crowded country in the industrial world – more than Japan and the Netherlands.

On defence, the LibDem policy of throwing doubt on the continuance of the Trident deterrent beyond its current replacement date of 2020-24 will simply increase pressure on Britain to give up its permanent United Nations Security Council seat, a seat we have held since we, the USA and the former Soviet Union co-founded the United Nations in 1945.

In fact Clegg is personally committed to handing over our seat to the EU, which with his nuclear policy would leave France as the only credible independent country in Europe.

One or two former political figures like David Owen, who helped found the LibDems, and who have close contacts now with them, have advanced the idea that the nuclear deterrent could be carried more cheaply by cruise missiles.  Unlike the Trident ballistic missiles whose route to target is set in the submarine in a vertical parabola, which cannot be interfered with after launch, cruise missiles are basically horizontal in flight, continuously corrected by the guidance they carry with them and therefore continuously exposed to electronic jamming and redirection.  This is all apart from the colossal systems of communications, research, maintenance, dock systems at Faslane and Devonport which would have to be built from scratch for the new cruise missile submarines, but which are already built for Trident systems and their replacedments.  But then these “details” are of no concern to politicians, acting out roles on the national stage or, in Owen’s case, trying to stage a comeback.

So vote LibDem with its European obsessions added to its defence illusions, UN Security Council Seat surrender and policy of uncontrolled immigration and you will end up with Britain ceasing to be an independent, self-governing country in any sense at all.

My political starting point is that for Britain to regain its self-respect and optimism about the future, in a phrase – to get our country back – two fundamental beliefs need to be established in the minds of people at all levels of society.

Firstly, the only way to steer our country out of the dreadful economic mess which successive governments have brought about, is to give absolute priority to producing the goods and services which the world wants and will pay for. Everyone will have to be engaged to achieve this result.

Secondly, to become a happy and confident nation again, we need to replace the mindset which defers automatically to minority groups, by one which takes a proportionate pride in what our country has achieved over a tremendous span of time – thirteen centuries – in literature, the arts, science, engineering, exploration, and on the battlefield – and to take inspiration for the future from these things.

To start along this road, there are five steps we should take now:

1.Replace the 20th century “make-do-and-mend” approach to our economy by a set of long-term programmes for transport, energy supply, river and coastal protection, and above all for manufacture on which two-thirds of our exports depend: a 5% per year expansion of manufacture over ten years would eliminate our colossal trade deficit and create around one million skilled jobs.

2.Put an end to mass immigration into our over-crowded country once and for all. This in itself will mean Britain leaving the European Union and repealing the Human Rights Act 1998 from which so many perverse decisions derive.

3.Teach all our children our history in chronological sequence from Roman times to the present day with a proportionate, non-apologetic treatment of the British Empire and the Industrial Revolution.

4.Remove all actual or implied race, gender and social class quotas and preferences from the education system, our employment laws, advertisements and official documents of all kinds. Abolish the equality and diversity quangos which depend on them. Cease publishing official documents in foreign languages.

5.Recognise that for someone of working age, not having a job is the greatest social deprivation of all and that other things being equal, British citizens must receive preference in job applications.

UKIP’s national policies are addressed to the people of Suffolk Coastal constituency as much as they are to the rest of the United Kingdom, but as your UKIP candidate, living by choice in Suffolk, one of the most rural of English counties, I recognise there are issues in Suffolk Coastal for which our national policies have special relevance.

These include:

East coast defences

• A long-term programme (LTP) for defence against coastal erosion and inland river flooding. The coastal erosion protection programme is particularly relevant to the whole coastline from just north of Felixstowe right up to Wrentham, the north of the constituency.  The responsibility for our coasts and rivers will be transferred from Natural England to a section in DEFRA specifically charged with maintaining them.
• A permanent end to mass immigration and therefore a complete change to population growth projections. This is particularly relevant to Felixstowe and Martlesham areas of the constituency because the Local Development Framework plans for some 3,000 new homes are based essentially on a population growth projection of an additional nine million people in Britain by 2032, which in turn is based on assuming an additional 300,000 per year of net immigration indefinitely. UKIP is adamantly opposed to this flow of people into an already overcrowded country^[1] from the rest of the world.
• UKIP is also opposed to building large estates on green-belt land and will withdraw all planning “Guidance Notes” specifying minimum housing densities and maximum numbers of parking spaces.
• Removing schools from LEA control through the children’s voucher system of paying for them, will allow decisions to be taken by voucher holders (i.e. parents) on whether village schools in particular should be retained, or indeed re-opened, case by case.
• Rural Transport
• Secure Energy

Tracking Votes in Suffolk Coastal

The following table shows that at the last test of voters’ preferences in Suffolk Coastal (June 2009), UKIP came second after the Conservatives, beating the LibDems, the Greens and Labour in that order.

Footnotes

1. England is where the vast majority of immigration occurs and it is already the most densely populated major country in the world.

SUMMARY

1. End Mass Immigration for ever: a FIVE YEAR FREEZE followed by a referendum on future numbers.
2. Create ONE MILLION new skilled jobs through a 50% expansion of manufacture.
3. END Mass House Building plans and targets.  Pass decisions on small-scale building plans to parishes.
4. STOP Coastal Erosion and River Flooding by LONG-TERM properly engineered defences and systematic dredging.
5. CANCEL the Labour government’s huge unreliable wind-farm programme and REPLACE it with reliable NUCLEAR stations.
6. SECURE Britain’s Electricity Supplies by telling the EU that we will NOT CLOSE NINE coal-fired power stations by 2015 under their emissions directive.
7. BENEFITS will be payable only to British citizens who are at least 21 years of age and to foreign residents only if they have paid taxes for at least 5 years.
8. WITHDRAW Britain from the EU. REJOIN the democratic free world and save £12 billion per year.

Individual Policies are summarised as follows (fuller versions can be found on the UKIP website):

IMMIGRATION

Immigration is now running at around 190,000 acceptances for settlement each year, which is the equivalent of a town about the size of Ipswich, Felixstowe and Woodbridge combined. In 2009 there were 500,000 new foreign arrivals for work and settlement (figures from the National Statistical Office, March 2010).

These gigantic numbers give the lie to Labour claims of “getting immigration under control” and the futility of the half-baked proposals (“points system”) of the LibDems and Conservatives. The figure of five hundred thousand arrivals corresponds to eight per thousand of the British population, or more than double the cap of 3.5 per thousand which the USA imposed in 1920 to control entry into their country, which is 30 times the size of Britain and 60 times the size of England (where most immigrants settle).

UKIP will END mass immigration once and for all by:

1. Implementing a FIVE year freeze on all immigration (including asylum seekers arriving from safe countries) except those of British descent who retain a right of entry under the 1981 Nationality Act.
2. During the freeze the government would concentrate on removing existing illegal immigrants and failed asylum seekers, and introduce a 1-2 year job permit system only where the employer can show (a) urgent need and (b) is prepared to train British people to the requisite standards of performance during the permit time.
3. At the end of the FIVE year freeze the British people would be asked in a referendum to decide on a permanent limit of immigration at one of several levels, but in any case not exceeding 50,000 per year (including dependants).
4. While it is a member of the EU, Britain has to accept any number of immigrants from the other member states, with populations totalling 450 million people, with the prospect of  Turkey adding another 75 million.  Britain must therefore withdraw from the EU to carry out any control of people flows into our country from Europe.

JOBS, SKILLS & ENTERPRISE (1)

Over 10 years UKIP would expand manufacture by 50% by:

1. Establishing a national network of Production Enterprise Centres (PECs).
2. PECs would PARTNER Small & Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in expanding their production and entering new markets at home and abroad.  Where markets exist but are not being addressed, the PECs will directly establish new businesses to serve these markets.
3. Expansion by 50% would create around 650,000 skilled jobs in manufacture itself and a similar number in associated services.
4. Over a period of 5 years, introduce a new Education & Training Voucher for all at 18+ to be cashed in at any time of their working life (see UKIP policy on Higher and Further Education).  This voucher would enable the newly expanded industries to obtain the qualified staff they will need.

JOBS, SKILLS & ENTERPRISE (2)

UKIP would establish the concept of LONG-TERM PROGRAMMES as follows:

1. A 25 year, £100 Bn programme of nuclear power station construction to provide approximately two thirds of our future electricity needs, thus guaranteeing energy security.
2. The present vastly expensive system of selective subsidies to wind energy would be abolished.  In its place UKIP would establish a system of uniform financial support for all non-fossil fuel electricity generation, including nuclear, wind and solar.
3. A 30 year £45 Bn programme of building major new sea defences along the East and Southern coasts and flood defences along at-risk inland rivers.  Natural England’s responsibilities for these matters would be abolished.
4. A 10 year £45 Bn addition to a programme of re-equipment of the armed forces, including the two fixed-wing and helicopter equipped carriers “Queen Elizabeth and “Prince of Wales”.  These will be the most effective projection of military force you can have for the money (around £10 bn).

JOBS, SKILLS & ENTERPRISE (3)

1    PECs are companies, part-owned by the state, designed to help increase Britain’s output of tangible products by a half over a decade.  While the ownership of a PEC’s assets may see a reduction in the state’s shareholding, this will include a golden share preventing control passing into foreign hands.

2    Individual PECs will focus on the production of good for specific markets at home and abroad, where Britain is under-represented, for example plastics moulds, medical equipment, consumer electronics.

3    Where possible PECs will work in partnership with existing companies providing market data, skilled labour, research & design and finance on a joint venture basis, but if there is no suitable British firm to address an identified market, then an entirely new PEC enterprise will be set up to supply that market.

4    PECs will be nurseries of firms – in general no firm will be supported for more than 5 years.

5    A given PEC – say in medical equipment, may embrace several individual enterprises – some wholly privately owned, some part-state owned.  Though operating independently each PEC will see itself as part of a Network which will share legal, patent, design and foreign language services and above all market knowledge.  All PECs will have an export dimension – generally working with the commercial sections of British Embassies abroad.  Over time the PEC network will become a unique store-house of information about commercial opportunities in foreign countries and will also contain the foreign language capabilities to help PEC companies in the legal and cultural sphere to gain a foothold in foreign markets.

Felixstowe Port

6    Individual PECs, e.g. water industry equipment, will be housed in buildings with office and factory space, in business parks with good access to airports and sea ports.  Where possible they will be in areas where some industry in their particular sector is already present, but this will not always be the case.  Nonetheless, the clustering of like firms in specific areas is a useful way of nurturing other firms and building up a pool of skilled people.

7    Products covered by the PECs don’t have to be so-called “hi-tech”, bit in all cases they will employ the highest levels of manufacturing technology and customized design.  In this way they will successfully compete with so-called “cheap labour” suppliers from the Far East.

8    Depending on their market scope PECs will cost in the region of £50-100 million to establish and run for 5 years.  Half of the cost of this, including the establishment cost, will be borne by the state in the form of share capital held by the Treasury in a special unit, similar to that administering the taxpayers’ shares in the part-owned banks.

9    To be taken up by a PEC a market will need to be potentially worth £50 million per year and located in countries in which there are at least one other market of interest to a PEC or existing firm trading in that country, so that marketing costs can be shared and operating knowledge exchanged.

10  People  While the PECs will engage local services for office cleaning, building maintenance and so on, all the directly employed staff will be skilled and qualifed people, the products of certified apprenticeships, national diplomas and university degrees in science, engineering and aesthetic design.  Over time a recognisable cadre of young, technically qualifed managers will be developed, capable of moving to other firms, or starting their own – something which the UK has lacked for 150 years.  This will present our young people with the most exciting opportunity in the fields of production anywhere in the world.

ENVIRONMENT

There are many issues under this heading, but the two over which we have direct control and which have the greatest effects on our lives are land use and protection of our river-ways and coastlines.

Specific UKIP policies are:

1. Planning decisions on building, including houses and roads serving them, to be taken by that level of government which most closely corresponds to those directly affected – if necessary at parish level.  There will be an end to building large estates on green belt land.  Guidance Notes specifying minimum housing densities will be withdrawn.
2. A thirty-year £45 billion programme of defences against river flooding and coastal erosion.  This will mean deepening and regular dredging of major rivers, and construction of long-term sea defences.
3. The increased land values to be shared between the property-owners benefiting from the work, and the state, which will pay for most of it in the first instance.
4. As part of UKIP’s energy policy, the present vastly generous subsidies to wind-turbine owners will be reduced to a level common to all non-fossil fuel electricity generation.  This will mean that wind-turbines will likely be confined to sparsely populated outlying areas of Britain, where they can compete with local diesel electricity generation

Environment Policies (2): Waste Disposal

For any artefact there are four possible outcomes: (1) recycle, (2) convert to energy/electricity, (3) incinerate to atmosphere, (4) disposal in landfill.

1    Recycle

We follow the 3 R’s precept for recycle namely, in descending order of priority:

(i) reduce – use less where possible by good design

(ii) reuse (non-food) – either directly or by simple adaptation

(iii) reprocess – plastics can often be formed into lower grade uses such as fencing and board without costly energy intensive cleaning.

Three options remain for what is left:

2  Energy from waste

(principally incineration or bio-digestion, mainly for space heating)

3  Incineration with pollutant filtering

4  Landfill

After option 1 UKIP strongly favours option 2.  The UK is enormously behind in making use of waste, as a consequence of 50 years of gross mismanagement and neglect by Labour and Conservative governments.

Our policy is to emphasise practical steps including:

(a) redesign-for-reuse products

(b) compaction systems for plastics, paper and board to provide fuel brickets for electricity generation and local heating systems.

Britain’s Energy (1): Electricity Blackouts Ahead

The Labour Government, with no discernible opposition from the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, has brought to Britain the real prospect of Electricity blackouts from around 2015 onwards.  This is a total disgrace for any self-respecting First World country.

How has this come about?

• Labour and the Lib-Cons have wilfully ignored the fact that wind can never replace North Sea oil and gas as a nationally owned secure energy source on the scale we need to sustain our industries.
• In the coldest weeks of January and February industry suffered electricity cuts while the wind farms connected to the National Grid delivered power for around 5% of the time, contributing a miniscule 0.15% of our electricity needs.  This is not a one-off: Britain usually has a high pressure low wind weather system in winter.
• Unbelievably, this Government has signed up the UK to the EU’s Large Combustion Plant Directive, which will close 9 coal-fired power stations on emission grounds by 2015.  With 5 old nuclear stations due to close by 2016, this amounts to a loss of nearly one quarter of our electricity capacity, making blackouts inevitable.

Britain’s Energy (2): UKIP’s Policies

In the light of our country’s perilous energy position UKIP proposes:

• UK should inform the EU Commission that it will not implement the closure of 9 coal-burning electricity stations under the Large Combustion Plant Directive until new nuclear power plants have been built to replace them.  The coal-fired power station owners will be given guarantees on this.
• Cancellation of the present Government’s huge 15 year £100 Bn+ off-shore and on-shore wind turbine programmes.

Sizewell Nuclear Site

A four-fold increase over 25 years in the present nuclear electricity generation capacity costing around £100 Bn over the period, but providing approximately two-thirds of Britain’s future electricity needs (like France today).

• A new British-owned National Nuclear Corporation to urgently set about building nuclear power stations alongside those to be built (we hope) by French and German companies.
• A system of uniform financial support for all non-fossil fuel electricity, including nuclear, wind and solar, actually delivered to the consumer.

PRIMARY SCHOOL EDUCATION

1. No more national testing until age 11 (key stage 2), but formal in-school testing once a year at least.
2. Abolish sex and relationship teaching for the under tens with an option for year 6.
3. Move to full choice of school without catchment areas by means of a voucher for the average cost per pupil (£4,500), given to parents and presented to the school for reimbursement by the Treasury.
4. Schools will be responsible for finances and staff appointments and need to be licensed to participate in the voucher scheme.  They will receive a voucher for running themselves to be paid for from the savings made from the greatly reduced roles of Local Education Authorities (LEA) and the Department for Children, Families and Schools (DCFS).
5. Over a period Ofsted will be replaced by a licensing authority, which will focus on (a) financial arrangements, and (b) teaching standards, in constructive ways.  Ofsted’s current role in monitoring social services will be transferred to a Social Services Inspectorate charged with examining actual outcomes for children, rather than bureaucratic box-ticking.

SECONDARY SCHOOL EDUCATION

Standards of attainment and of behaviour in our schools vary hugely from very poor to outstanding.  UKIP recognises that the intake to secondary schools also varies hugely, particularly where children’s home circumstances are educationally impoverished.

1. UKIP will move to a full choice of school, starting with the abolition of catchment areas, and then introduce a voucher of about £5,500 a year per pupil. This would be redeemed by the Treasury on presentation by the school.  Schools would have to be licensed to take part and their licence would be renewed from time to time.
2. As with primary schools, secondary schools will be responsible for their own finances and staff appointments and will be subject to licensing.  They will receive a voucher for these responsiblities paid for from the saving accruing from the greatly reduced roles of the LEAs and the DCFS.
3. Pupils will only be admitted to secondary schools if they pass an English reading, writing and arithmetic test at a level which will allow them to gain full benefit from the secondary school curriculum.
4. The present system of competing GCSE and A-level examination boards will be replaced by a single academic board for the whole country run by the universities.
5. A single National Vocational Qualifications board will be retained, but aimed at serving industry’s requirements, not attempting to establish confusing equivalences with academic qualifications.

HIGHER & FURTHER EDUCATION

University and Further Education have come under great pressure from the expansion of numbers going to university.  Labour’s target of 50% of 18 year-olds going to university AND the Conservative’s “open-door” policy of allowing some FE colleges to become universities has resulted in some very low entry standards, a high drop-out rate and some dubious degrees.

1. UKIP will replace the whole fees structure by a life-time “Education and Training” voucher which will be provided to all British students on their 18th birthday.  This voucher will be available only to British citizens.
2. The voucher will be redeemable for the equivalent of three years’ full-time study at various levels, depending on the student’s course.  It will be useable throughout life for full or part-time study.
3. The vouchers will be given to 18 year-olds irrespective of parental circumstances and income.  Their total value will approximate the £13-15 billion now spent on HE and FE.  Loans will still be available.
4. This system will remove the pressure on young people to take a university place at 18 and allow time for their interests and motivation for study to develop.

BRITAIN and EUROPE

• Britain is a member of THREE predominantly European organisations:
  1. Council of Europe (44 members) founded in 1949.
  2. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO – 20 members) founded in 1949 (includes USA and Canada).
  3. European Union (now 27 members) founded as the EEC (6 members)  in 1957 – which Britain, Ireland and Denmark joined in 1973.

   

• The first two are voluntary alliances between independent nations – the Council of Europe for social and legal cooperation and NATO for mutual defence.
• The EU is an organisation intended to form a new country from its member states on the lines of the USA.  As part of this objective, the EU is constantly trying to establish military command structures, which not only duplicate those of NATO, but cause confusion in the military forces of the member countries of both organisations.
• UKIP is fundamentally opposed to Britain surrendering its self-government to the EU in this or any other way and will withdraw Britain from it.
• After withdrawal, Britain will:
  1. No longer send representatives to the European Parliament
  2. Stop payments of around £12,000 Million (this year) to EU institutions.
  3. Recover our fishing rights in the North Sea, the English Channel and other parts of the Continental Shelf claimed by the EU.
  4. Implement our own system of farming support
  5. As a member of the World Trade Organisation, trade with the EU on the same basis as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the USA and Japan do now.
  6. Continue as a full member of the Council of Europe, of  NATO, and the World Trade Organisation, membership of which guarantees that no other member can raise tariffs against another member without incurring legal sanctions.
  7. As one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, with a power of veto over UN operations, Britain will continue to play a prominent part in securing world peace as it also does through NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme.
  8. Restore British blue passports and allow citizens of other Crown countries the same passport control access as British passport holders.

This is a substantial paper by Prof Stephen Bush on increasing UK manufacturing by 50%.

It was written on 2nd February 2010 for the UKIP policy group on “Jobs, Enterprise and the Economy” for the parliamentary election campaign.

To read the text of a summary or the pdf of the whole paper, please click on the link “Produce and Prosper” which will take you to the paper on the Britain Watch website.

A letter to the Sunday Times which was published on 4th November 2007.

In your editorial ‘Right not to remain silent’ (Comment, last week) you state that “one of the unspoken truths is that there is little the government can do to control immigration” because as Britain is a “member of the European Union, many of these people can come and go as they please”.  However, one may ask what scale of national catastrophe will we have to endure before the really unmentionable subject of leaving the EU is contemplated.

While the latest of a sequence of projections and corrections (for 2005) gives a net flow of 190,000 people coming each year, what has not been so clearly broadcast is that this figure derives from about 550,000 coming in (including about 90,000 returning British citizens) minus about 360,000 leaving (about 170,000 British).  Thus there was estimated a net inflow of foreign nationals of 270,000 and a net outflow of 80,000 British, an increase of 350,000 in the relative size of the foreign population.  This is projected for each year to 2050.

This would mean that in the lifetimes of almost everyone under 40 the foreign-born population will have grown relative to the native population by more than 15 million, twice the population of Greater London – about the same change proportionately as has been inflicted on the Tibetan people by the enforced immigration of ethnic Chinese.

Britain’s catastrophe can be averted by stopping immigration completely, for say five years, until the British people have had a chance to pronounce on whom and how many they want to settle here.

A speech at the first Goldsmith Memorial Lecture on 22nd May 2007, at University College in London.

To read the text please click on the link to the “Governance of Britain” page of the Britain Watch website.

A letter to the Times which was published on 20th January 2003.

Ann Widdecombe’s defence of her proposed system of secure holding centres for all asylum-seekers (letter, January 16th) is sound as far as it goes.  It does not, however, take the measure of the truly desperate situation which nearly six years of Labour Government has brought about, starting with the abolition of the primary purpose rule and other reversals of the previous Government’s policy.

Asylum and immigration have been confused, deliberately so in my view, by the supposed labour shortages in the British economy.  With 15 million currently unemployed, 155,000 jobs lost in manufacturing last year (Business, January 16th), many thousands currently being made redundant in the IT and financial sectors, and possibly one third of 16-year-olds (around 250,000 per year) according to the Department for Education and Skills ill-equipped to participate fully in the economy, we have in this country not a labour shortage, but a massively unbalanced labour force.  The few hundred degree-holders among the hundreds of thousands in the asylum/immigration queue are very unlikely to have the practical skills this country really needs.  The overwhelming majority will not even speak English.

A complete moratorium on non-patrial immigration and asylum for, say, five years is the only measure which will allow the backlog of what I estimate to be between 500,000 and a million asylum-seekers and dependants to be cleared.

The Government could also use this five-year breathing space to enact enforceable laws for asylum and immigration drawn up after consultation with the British people, preferably in conformity with a new international convention to replace the outdated 1951 Convention on Refugees, but if necessary without it.