The British public wants immigration slashed to below 50,000 entrants per year according to a new poll by Survation. The data reveals that a whopping 76 per cent of people believe that Britain’s immigration figures should be below 50,000 a year compared with the current status – more than 600,000 people a year.
Asked if the UK should limit the number of people coming to the UK from the European Union by introducing an Australian points based immigration system, 76 per cent agreed – the same number as want to reduce migration to below 50,000. Just 15 per cent of people said they would continue with Britain’s open borders to Europe.
And of those who wanted migration heavily reduced, 10 per cent of those polled said they want no immigration to the UK whatsoever, with 41 per cent of people backing a “fewer than 10,000 a year” approach, and a further 25 per cent said they wanted the number between 10,000 and 50,000.
The news will come as a blow to Prime Minister David Cameron who has failed to include a restriction to the number of people coming to Britain in his European Union membership ‘renegotiation’ plan.
And while 47 per cent of people said his lack of renegotiation on this point would not change the way they intended to vote in the European Union referendum, 30 per cent said it would – representing a large number of people the pro-EU camp needs to win over to win the vote.
There is also the likelihood that those who stated it would make “no difference to my vote” are the same as the 48 per cent of people who told Survation that they would vote to leave the EU. The poll found that 52 per cent are currently keen to remain EU members. The poll on the referendum did not deliver the “post-Paris bump” for the out campaign that was widely expected.