Suzanne Evans, the party’s vice chairman, said that there would be no immigration target when the manifesto is formally published in a fortnight’s time.
The UK Independence Party’s immigration policy is in chaos after it dropped plans to cap the numbers of migrants coming to the UK from the party’s forthcoming election manifesto.
Suzanne Evans, the party’s vice chairman, said that there would be no immigration target when the manifesto is formally published in a fortnight’s time.
Miss Evans’s comments came a day after Nigel Farage, the party leader, said that he wanted to see net migration capped at 30,000 a year by 2018 if Britain left the European Union this year.
That was contradicted hours later by Steven Woolfe, the Ukip’s immigration who said the cap was 50,000 a year, and referred to one of five different categories of migrant.
Asked about the targets, Miss Evans told an early morning press conference in Westminster: “There are no net migration targets – this is a media confection.
“Nigel (He) was talking about what might be an ideal, he was talking about a return to normality.
“He said frequently that what he wants to get to on migration is a return to normality which is what he perceives as being between the 1950s and 2000.”
Miss Evans said that Mr Woolfe was “expressing his own personal opinion about what might be reasonable.
“But I can tell you that there won’t be any mention of 50,000 or 30,000 in the manifesto that will be official party policy.”
She said that immigration was an “important policy but we don’t want to be distracted by targets.
“Nobody in Ukip is opposed to immigration – we are opposed to immigration that is not the right sort of immigration”.
Asked if that was a target, she said: “It depends how you define a target. We want say that we are going to have an Australian-style points system which means that people will be let in if they have skills to offer to Britain if they can support themselves and any dependents they bring with them for at least a period of five years.
“On that basis the numbers will be what they numbers will be in the best interests of Britain. Too many politicians have tried to hoodwink the public over the past decade or so, talking about numbers and targets which are unrealistic and cannot be met.”
Source: The Telegraph
