Sir Tony Blair accused of hypocrisy over immigration controls call

Sir Tony Blair has been accused of hypocrisy after urging Sir Keir Starmer to bring in immigration controls.

The former prime minister said on Tuesday that the public wanted controls on immigration, warning: “If you don’t have rules you get prejudices.”

It followed his call on Sunday for the new Labour Government to consider introducing digital ID cards to help control immigration.

However, Sir Tony came under fire from senior Tory MPs, who claimed his demand for controls sat uneasily with his tenure in power, when net migration increased fivefold from 48,000 to 273,000 between 1997 and 2007.

Danny Kruger, the co-chairman of the New Conservatives group, said: “Both parties have failed to control migration but it all started with Tony Blair opening the borders to eastern European migration which got our economy hooked on cheap foreign labour. It is hypocritical for him now to be stressing the importance of controlling our borders.”

Neil O’Brien, a former MP and health minister, said: “These problems really started to become acute during his time in Government. I think everyone will take what he says with a massive pinch of salt.

“The election and some of the problems with community cohesion which we saw are a direct result of problems that took hold while he was prime minister, which he didn’t do anything about at the time.”

Office for National Statistics data show net migration averaged 318,000 a year after Labour left office in 2010 to be replaced by coalition then Tory administrations, peaking at 764,000 in 2022.

It is projected to fall below 300,000 after measures introduced by Rishi Sunak. Sir Keir has pledged to cut net migration.

Speaking on the BBC, Sir Tony said he believed a balance needed to be struck between people appreciating the “enormous benefits” of immigration and the desire for restrictions on people coming to the UK. “So this is the balance that you need to strike because as I say, if you don’t have rules you get prejudices,” he said.

Challenged over the “massive increase” in net migration during his premiership, Sir Tony said it was a “great myth”.

He said: “Just to be very clear about it, immigration on the day I left office was around half of what it is today.”

Arguing for digital ID cards – first proposed by his Government, then ditched by the Tory-LibDem Coalition – Sir Tony said it would enable the Government to establish “precisely who has a right to be here.”

He said: “With, again, technology, we should move as the world is moving to digital ID. If not, new border controls will have to be highly effective.”

The proposal was immediately knocked down by the Government with Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, saying: “It’s not in our manifesto. That’s not our approach.”

Mandelson advises restraint on ID cards

On Tuesday, Lord Mandelson suggested that Sir Tony was “unwise” to try to get Labour to back digital ID cards so quickly after the party’s election victory.

The former trade secretary and one of the architects of New Labour said he believed the case for e-ID cards was stronger now than in the early 2000s.

However, he added: “I think raising it now and trying to herd them into place just on their third day in office is probably not wise and it would be better to let them reflect on it over the summer.

“Because I think migration is one of the biggest policy challenges facing this Government. And they have got to think afresh about how they manage it.

“I think ID cards are something that in this context does have to be considered. But not to be rushed and not to be, as it were, sort of manhandled into it. And I don’t think Tony’s trying to do that, by the way.”

Asked if he was convinced by Labour’s immigration plan, Sir Tony said: “I think what they are doing on border control and so on, if they can make it effective, will make a huge difference.”

Sir Keir is proposing to set up a new border security command with Border Force, MI5 and the National Crime Agency to crack down on people-smuggling gangs.

He has scrapped the Conservatives’ Rwanda scheme and will use the £75 million saved in the first year to hire up to 1,000 extra investigators and intelligence agents, who will be given counter terrorism-style powers to prosecute gangs operating small boat routes across the Channel.

More than 90,000 migrants earmarked by Rishi Sunak’s government for deportation to Rwanda will be transferred to the asylum system, entitling them to apply for leave to remain in the UK.

The move was described as an “effective amnesty” by James Cleverly, the shadow home secretary.

Meanwhile, addressing the debate on transgender rights, Sir Tony warned that Labour must not end up in a situation in which it denied biology.

The comments came after Sir Keir sparked a row on Monday by appointing Anneliese Dodds, who has previously said there are many definitions of a woman, as the women and equalities minister.

Sir Tony admitted he had never expected headlines in which he was quoted as saying that “a woman has a vagina and a man has a penis”, adding: “I never thought I’d see that in a headline, or that it’d be particularly controversial to be absolutely frank, but there it is.”

JK Rowling, the author, said during the election that she would “struggle to support” Labour if Sir Keir did not change his stance on trans rights, prompting him to say in an interview that single-sex spaces for biological women needed to be protected.

Sir Tony said: “Personally, I think the Labour Party will be in the correct position on this, and Keir Starmer’s made that clear.

“I’ve always had a high regard for JK Rowling, and I think it’s important just to distinguish between trying to treat people fairly when they have a genuine feeling that they’re a person who feels that even though biologically they’re one sex, that they really want to be another.

“We shouldn’t end up in a situation where we deny the biology, because I don’t understand how that really helps people that are suffering from a condition that’s extremely difficult for them.”