Badenoch appears to slap down Patel over migration figures

A spokesperson for the Tory leader said the party would ‘tell the truth about the mistakes we made’ under her leadership.

Kemi Badenoch and Dame Priti Patel join Conservative MPs and farmers to protest outside the Houses of Parliament in central London over the changes to inheritance tax (IHT) rules in the recent budget with introduce new taxes on farms worth more than one million pounds — Kemi Badenoch said her party would ‘tell the truth’ about what it got wrong in government after her shadow foreign secretary declined to apologise for record-high immigration figures (Andrew Matthews/PA)

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch appeared to slap down Dame Priti Patel after she declined to apologise for record-high immigration figures.

Appearing on The Sun’s Never Mind The Ballots programme on Thursday, the shadow foreign secretary said it was “totally distortionary” to suggest the previous government had “thrown open our borders” to the rest of the world.

Official figures show net migration has soared since the UK left the EU in January 2020, reaching a record high of 903,000 in the year to June 2023 before falling back slightly to 728,000 in the following year.

Although Dame Priti, who served as home secretary between 2019 and 2022, said she was “not fine” with the levels of immigration in the past three years, she declined to apologise for the figures and said the previous government had “made it quite clear it would be people from the rest of the world, people with skills” coming into the UK after Brexit.

Her comments drew criticism from Labour, with a party spokesperson saying the Conservatives were “out of touch with reality”, adding Dame Priti “seems proud of her central role in the Tory open-border experiment”.

But later on Thursday, a spokesman for Mrs Badenoch appeared to rebuke Dame Priti, saying the Conservative Party under her leadership “will tell the truth about the mistakes we made”.

The spokesman said: “While the last Conservative government may have tried to control numbers, we did not deliver.”

Dame Priti subsequently clarified her comments, saying the UK’s immigration system was “not fit for purpose” and she was “not happy about the high numbers while the Conservatives were in government”.

She added: “Our party is now under new leadership and it is important we learn from our mistakes and how we can do things better.

“As a former home secretary, I have seen no interest whatsoever from any other political parties in understanding our system or learning these lessons.

“I’m pleased the Leader of the Opposition and shadow home secretary have said they will develop a new plan on how to control immigration, including a hard cap on visas.

“This is what is needed. More words will not solve the problem.”

In November, Mrs Badenoch committed to introducing a hard cap on visas if the Conservatives returned to power.

Her spokesman added: “We are now developing a detailed plan on immigration to put before the British public before the next election, so voters have a clear choice: Labour, who will keep immigration far too high, or a new plan and a hard cap on numbers with Kemi’s Conservatives.”