Jacob Rees-Mogg admits Tories failed on immigration in public apology - but refuses to blame Brexit - video Dailymotion

Jacob Rees-Mogg admits Tories failed on immigrationBBC Question Time

Transcript

00:00No, there was not an open borders experiment but immigration policy failed and it failed

00:05very badly and it failed to do what the British people had wanted.

00:09So when Robert Jenrick, who is now Shadow Justice Secretary and was a former immigration

00:13minister said today is a day of shame for the Conservative Party, the public are right

00:18to be furious, do you agree?

00:20Yes I agree with him and as a Conservative let me apologise to people.

00:23We failed and we were culpable for that because we were in charge.

00:28There are all sorts of reasons why we failed.

00:31So what went wrong?

00:32What went wrong?

00:35Partly it was a response to Covid and there was a feeling that it was going to be very

00:39hard to find people to fill jobs.

00:41Partly it was the way that economic growth was scored by the ABR and it was thought that

00:45migration would boost growth and would allow the tax revenues to rise and to pay for public

00:51services that people want.

00:53Partly a new system was being brought in which allowed too many people to come in.

00:58Post Brexit?

00:59Well, it was a post Brexit system.

01:00We had control.

01:01The terrible thing is that we had control.

01:04We do now have control of our numbers and we let far too many people in.

01:08As someone who was a strong proponent of Brexit, that the figures for net migration were lower

01:13pre-Brexit than post-Brexit.

01:15Well hold on, they were completely wrong pre-Brexit so...

01:17Are you disputing that they were lower?

01:19Well the figures, let me just explain, the pre-Brexit figures, it was thought that about

01:24two million people would register as a right to stay here post-Brexit.

01:31The figure was over five million when it was finally created.

01:34So for years the ONS was giving us wrong figures on the people coming from the European Union.

01:41So yes I do dispute that they were lower beforehand because they were simply wrong.

01:45They were an extra three million plus people who had come in who no one was recording.