Immigration levels will sometimes rise after Brexit, says David Davis

Immigration levels will not necessarily come down consistently after Britain leaves the European Union, the Brexit secretary has indicated.

Concerns over the net migration level were thought to be central to many people’s decision to vote in favour of Brexit last year, with many wanting to see the numbers cut drastically.

The former Ukip leader Nigel Farage, for example, repeatedly said he would support cutting immigration numbers, even if doing so harmed Britain’s economy.

David Davis, however, admitted on Monday that some industries “depend on migrants” and that means the level would rise as well as fall, where necessary.

“The first issue here is to bring this back under the control of the UK government, the UK parliament,” he told a BBC1 Question Time Brexit special. “I don’t think most people oppose migration; I think most people are in favour of migration so long as it’s managed. The point is, it will need to be managed.”

He acknowledged that levels of immigration would increase “from time to time”, depending on economic need.

It would be for the home secretary, Amber Rudd, to decide how migration would be managed, he said. However, he added that he could not imagine that the government’s policy would be “anything other than that which is in the national interest, which means that from time to time we will need more, from time to time we will need less”.

Davis added: “That is how it will no doubt work and that will be in everybody’s interests - the migrants and the citizens of the UK.”

Asked whether that would mean more migration than current levels, he said: “What it will be is whatever the government judges to be sustainable.”

Pressed on whether the target of reducing net migration to below 100,000 still applied, he said: “I think we will get there, but the simple truth is that we have to manage this properly. You have got industries dependent on migrants, you have got social welfare, the NHS, you have to make sure they can do the work.”

One of his fellow Question Time panellists, the Scottish National party’s foreign affairs spokesman Alex Salmond, said: “Nurse registrations from Europe have dropped 75% since Brexit. In a full year that will mean there will be 7,000 less qualified nurses from elsewhere in the EU working in our NHS.”

Ukip’s Suzanne Evans said that Britain needed a sustainable level of immigration and claimed that no one in the leave campaign said they wanted to stop it altogether. Ukip did call for a “moratorium on low-skilled labour for five years” during the last general election campaign.

On the BBC’s Newsnight programme broadcast on the same night, the former head of the diplomatic service warned that there was “no way” Brexit talks and a new trade deal can be completed in the two years allotted.

Sir Simon Fraser, who was the Foreign Office’s senior civil servant until 2015, said there were “very complex” issues that would need to be resolved and a transitional period will be necessary until a final agreement is settled.

“As we know, the EU side want to start with negotiating the terms of the separation. That’s about money. It’s about the rights of people living in other countries in Europe.

“It’s probably also about the borders - for example in Ireland. And the British side, on top of that, wants to move rapidly to discuss the future relationship - both political and economic - between Britain and the EU. And that is a very complex second set of negotiations.”

He said the two sides would be able to come to an agreement on their separation but not on their future relationship and would therefore need to think of “transitional mechanisms”.

“So there is a risk, nevertheless, that this breaks down or that we get to an unsatisfactory outcome and there is political ill will and turbulence - both political and economic,” he warned.

“I think it’s in the interests of both sides to try to avoid that. And if we have unfinished business, to find agreement on a mechanism - a smooth mechanism - for moving forward through transition, so that the unfinished stuff can continue to be negotiated thereafter, for economic relations and political relationship can continue.”