Yvette Cooper

Yvette Cooper

Labour — Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley

Speaking in the House of Commons on 12 May 2025

Debate

Immigration System

Contribution

Nice try! The right hon. Member was in the Cabinet that massively increased net migration and pushed the numbers up. He then belatedly had to attempt to restrict and reverse some—but just some—of the changes that he and his colleagues had previously endorsed and put before the country. The fact is he still never tackled the Conservatives’ fundamental approach: the free market experiment of encouraging people to recruit from abroad but never supporting training and conditions here in the UK. Fundamentally, that meant that he was desperately trying to close the door and deal with the problems without any proper strategy and without understanding why we needed those links with skills and training in the first place. We have to recognise the important way in which migration has always supported our economy, and that it will continue to do so, but it has to be properly controlled and managed—he did not do that.

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