Huge increases in immigration over the past decade were a deliberateattempt to engineer a more multicultural Britain, a former Governmentadviser said yesterday.
Andrew Neather, a speechwriter who worked in Downing Streetfor Tony Blair and in the Home Office for Jack Straw and DavidBlunkett, said Labour’s relaxation of controls was a plan to ‘open upthe UK to mass migration’.
As well as bringing in hundreds of thousands to plug labourmarket gaps, there was also a ‘driving political purpose’ behindimmigration policy, he claimed.
Ministers hoped to change the country radically and ‘rub the Right’snose in diversity’. But Mr Neather said senior Labour figures werereluctant to discuss the policy, fearing it would alienate its ‘coreworking-class vote’.
On Question Time, Mr Straw was repeatedly quizzed about whetherLabour’s immigration policies had left the door open for the BNP.
Writing in the Evening Standard, Mr Neather revealed the’major shift’ in immigration policy came after the publication of apolicy paper from the Performance and Innovation Unit, a Downing Streetthink tank based in the Cabinet Office.
This is a remarkable development following MEP Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time. — Ed.