Senior government ministers including Amber Rudd and Jeremy Hunt are damaging the UK’s standing in the world with their divisive rhetoric, the chair of the Commons Brexit committee, Hilary Benn, has said.
The former shadow foreign secretary said the Conservative party’s annual conference was an “absolute disaster” because senior politicians portrayed an image of the UK that was insular and aggressive towards foreigners.
Indicating that such language could influence negotiations with the EU, Benn said making pronouncements about what the government would achieve from its discussions would harden attitudes towards the UK among European politicians and officials.
Speaking at the Institute for Government’s headquarters in central London, Benn said: “When I reflect upon a certain week in Birmingham in the autumn, where people of a particular political party gathered and made speeches, I thought that was a disastrous week for Britain’s reputation in the world. Absolutely disastrous.
“Because to produce headlines saying ‘Crackdown on foreign students’ – when I last checked I wasn’t aware that foreign students were a problem that we need to crack down upon, it is ridiculous to have them in the net migration target – or saying that doctors who have brought their skills to this country can stay in the interim while we train more of our own doctors – it sent a message at that point that we are closing in on ourselves as a nation. That’s not who we are, it is not what Britain is. We will thrive in the future by being a welcoming country.”
He said ministers should stop claiming they would achieve certain goals from the Brexit negotiations before they began because it would only harden the opinions of those with whom Britain was negotiating.
“The second difficulty has been people sitting there saying: ‘We are going to get the following’. Well, the 27 [other EU member states] are thinking: ‘We will see about that’ … It would be prudent to change the tone,” he said.
In October, Rudd, the home secretary, told the party conference that the Home Office would shortly consult on the new student immigration system, and on tightening the resident labour market test that companies have to pass before recruiting employees from overseas. The moves were part of the drive to reduce net migration, which currently stands at 327,000, to “sustainable levels”.
“The test should ensure people coming here are filling gaps in the labour market, not taking jobs British people could do,” she said.
Hunt, the health secretary, told delegates he would recruit more UK-trained doctors to replace those who were being employed from abroad. “Is it right to import doctors from poorer countries that need them, while turning away bright home graduates desperate to study medicine?” he asked.
Benn said that while politicians should take on board the views of many Britons who wished to see curbs in migration, immigration targets were unhelpful because migrant labour was still needed in many sectors, including agriculture and social care.
He said he had seen first-hand the vital work migrants do as he nursed his father, the Labour veteran Tony Benn, who died in March 2014.
“When my father was dying, almost all who helped care for him were born outside of the UK. Who will look after us in the future?” he said.
