London: The David Cameron government's promise to substantially cut net migration during the tenure of the current parliament is unlikely to be met, according to a new analysis by the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.
In the promise made before the 2010 election and repeated often after coming to power, Conservative party leaders had promised to bring in tough restrictions to cut net migration (the annual difference between immigration and emigration) to "tens of thousands".
Conservative leaders have often accused previous Labour governments of losing control over immigration policies which allegedly led to net migration of "hundreds of thousands" every year.
However, recent measures such as placing annual limits on Indian and other non-EU nationals and restricting the number of student visas were unlikely to lead to net migration levels of "tens of thousands", the Oxford centre said.
Current immigration policy is set to miss the target by more than 65,000, the analysis has revealed. The Conservative party and its members in the government are likely to face much criticism if the targets are not met before the next elections in 2015.
In the commentary titled "Off Target", the observatory has established that the Conservative pledge to reduce net migration to less than 100,000 by 2015 does not correspond to the Government's own estimates of how far net migration can be reduced by current policy changes.
Latest figures show that net migration has increased to 242,000 (year to September 2010). The government is attempting to reduce this level in four ways: reducing labour immigration, student immigration and family immigration from outside the EU; and making it harder for migrants to settle in the UK by encouraging greater outflows. The 242,000 figure means that the government needs to reduce net migration by over 142,000 by 2015 to achieve their goal.
However, government assessments estimate that changes to the work route will reduce net migration by 11,000 in 2015, while the changes to the student route will reduce net migration by 56,000 in 2015.
The Migration Observatory estimates that forthcoming changes to family migration are unlikely to reduce net-migration by more than 8,000. Proposed changes to settlement policy are also unlikely to deliver tangible change for net-migration before 2016 as they will only affect migrants who arrived in the UK after April 2011, meaning it will take five years before they affect outflows, it said.
This means that, based on the Government's own figures and other generous assessments of the potential effects, the Government's current policies are unlikely to cut net migration by more than 75,000 and possibly less - by the end of this parliament.
Dr Scott Blinder, Senior Researcher at the Migration Observatory said: "The government's current policies only look likely to reduce net migration by about 75,000 at best which would mean that further reductions of more than 67,000 would be needed to meet the 'tens of thousands' net migration target'.
He added, "Essentially this leaves the government with four choices: introduce further restrictions on non-EU nationals; reconsider the target or the timeframe in which they intend to deliver it; continue and hope that net migration of British and EU nationals turns sufficiently negative; or continue and hope that all the current impact assessments are way off the mark. We think the last two of these are pretty unlikely."
Responding to the Oxford analysis, Immigration minister Damian Green repeated the promise: "This government will tackle abuse of the system and get net migration reduced back down to the tens of thousands in the lifetime of this parliament," he said.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Cameron said the Liberal Democrats (ruling coalition partner) were preventing the Conservative colleagues from taking tougher action on immigration.
He told the BBC: "We've all had to make compromises. If I was running a Conservative-only government I think we would be making further steps on things like immigration control... We make compromises, we make agreements, but as a government I think we're delivering a lot of good things for the country".
Liberal Democrats ministers such as Vince Cable (Business secretary) have openly opposed tougher restrictions on skilled professionals from India and other non-EU countries.
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