Immigration near top of list of issues concerning the Conservative Party members who will pick the next PM

With the choice of the next prime minister resting with the 160,000 members of the Conservative Party, the decision by contenders Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss to slug it out over who can be toughest on immigration comes as no surprise.

Surveys consistently show that the issue is of far greater salience to Tory voters and members than to the electorate at large.

A Redfield and Wilton poll this week found that 35 per cent of Conservatives ranked it in the top three issues determining their vote, against 15 per cent of Labour supporters and 24 per cent of the public at large. For Tories, immigration was an even bigger concern than taxes, which have been at the forefront of the leadership debate so far.

Despite promises to “take back control of our borders” after Brexit, net migration to the UK remains at around 239,000 a year – more than double the 100,000 target which David Cameron once pursued.

Rather than dramatically reducing overall immigration, as many Leave voters expected, the impact of Brexit has been a steep rise in arrivals from outside Europe, who now outnumber those from the EU. The Office for National Statistics estimates that 332,000 non-EU nationals came to settle in the UK in the year to July 2021, compared to 181,000 from the EU.

This change has been driven by a new points-based system giving priority to those with in-demand skills, as well as by the government’s open-door policy to people from Hong Kong with British overseas national status.

With the precise impact of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic on numbers difficult to disentangle, concern now is largely being driven by the new phenomenon of small boats ferrying migrants across the Channel from France.

Virtually unknown before 2019, the perilous crossings have increased sharply in recent years, partly due to tighter security around Channel ports where unauthorised migrants previously attempted to climb aboard UK-bound lorries and partly because of Covid shutting down alternative routes.

Concern over the small boat routes soared after the death of at least 27 people when a dinghy deflated and sank last November in the worst known tragedy of its kind in the Channel.

Prime minister Boris Johnson said the incident showed the need to break the economic model of people-smuggling gangs who he said were “getting away with murder”.

The UK gave France €62.7m (£54m) during 2021/22 to help increase police patrols along its coastline, boost aerial surveillance and increase security infrastructure at ports.

And in April, home secretary Priti Patel announced a controversial scheme to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda without first considering their applications.

The UK has paid £120m to the African state, despite the only planned deportation flight being blocked by the courts in June and no migrants having yet arrived there. Despite Mr Johnson’s initial claim that the scheme could see tens of thousands sent to Rwanda, the Kigali authorities recently said they can currently house only 200.

And the hardline initiatives – backed by both contenders for the Tory leadership – appear to have so far had little impact on numbers attempting the crossing.

There were 28,526 people detected arriving on small boats in 2021, compared to 8,466 the previous year, 1,843 in 2019 and 299 in 2018. Since the Ministry of Defence took over responsibility for recording arrivals in April, a further 9,513 have been detected.

Around 90 per cent of small boat passengers are male, with some 75 per cent working age men, leading to accusations that they are predominantly economic migrants seeking employment in Britain.

But the vast majority make claims for asylum, and research by the Refugee Council suggests that they are more likely to be granted the status than those arriving by other routes, with 61 per cent of the top 10 nationalities using small boats receiving protection on an initial decision and 59 per cent on appeal, compared to 52 and 46 per cent respectively for asylum seekers in general.

There were 55,146 asylum applications in the UK in the year ending March 2022 and 15,451 were granted asylum or another form of protection over the same period. But thousands more were stuck in a massive backlog of unresolved cases, with 109,000 people awaiting an initial decision in March this year.

Of the top 10 nationalities applying for asylum, half have a grant rate above 80 per cent (Iran 88%, Eritrea 97%, Syria 98%, Afghanistan 91%, and Sudan 95%).

Under international law, there is no such thing as an “illegal asylum seeker”, as anyone fleeing war or persecution has the right to seek refuge in any country which has signed the 1951 UN Convention, including the UK.

However, there are currently no “legal routes” for refugees to reach the UK, apart from via humanitarian schemes set up for those escaping conflict in Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine.

There is also no legal requirement for refugees to seek sanctuary in the first safe country they come to. Because of Brexit, the UK has lost the right to return unauthorised incomers to their first point of entry into the EU.

Despite immigration’s prominent position at the heart of political debate in the UK, Britain in fact hosts only around 1 per cent of the world’s 27.1m people displaced outside their home country’s borders.

Developing nations house by far the largest proportion of refugees, some 72 per cent of whom stay in countries neighbouring their homelands. Turkey currently has the most refugees, including around 3.7m Syrians.