Boris Johnson: Tories allowed migration to soar because we couldn’t stack shelves

Business and government departments were 'freaking out' over lack of staff, Boris Johnson said
Business and government departments were ‘freaking out’ over lack of staff, Boris Johnson said - Paul Thomas/Bloomberg

Boris Johnson has claimed migration to Britain was allowed to soar to record levels because there were not enough workers to “stack shelves”.

The former prime minister defended the surge in migration from 184,000 in 2019 to a record peak of 764,000 in 2022 because businesses and government departments were “freaking out” due to a shortage of workers “to get things done”.

Speaking on The Sun’s Never Mind the Ballots podcast, he warned that the alternative would have been rampant inflation, which would have been a “disaster” and hit people’s prosperity, turning the clock back to the 1970s.

Mr Johnson claimed it was not a betrayal of of Brexit and that he would have been able to defend his actions if he had remained as prime minister because, just as his immigration system had opened up to migrants, it was flexible enough to introduce curbs.

“That was an argument we could have won with the public to explain why there was that post-Covid bump and why Brexit enabled us to fix it,” he said.

After Brexit, Mr Johnson introduced an immigration points system that opened up half of all jobs in the UK to foreign workers, lowered salary and skilled thresholds for migrants and lifted the cap on migrants.

It also coincided with a surge in humanitarian visas to Ukrainians, Afghans and Hong Kongers taking up British National Overseas visas.

“[Net migration] went down dramatically during the pandemic. As we came out, what happened was that we had a nightmare where we could not stack the shelves and we could not fill the petrol stations with petrol,” said Mr Johnson.

“Everybody was freaking out, every business and every department of state was saying we need more pairs of hands to get things done.”

The aim, he said, was to prevent a surge in inflation, adding: “Inflation is a big destroyer of prosperity and investment. In the 1970s it was a disaster, so we had to get into an inflationary spiral and it saps people’s prosperity. It is a disaster.”

Mr Johnson acknowledged that “in hindsight” people could say the Government got it wrong, or the migration advisory committee – which advised ministers – got it wrong, adding: “But because of Brexit, we are able to get it right in future.”