Brexit would not mean huge drop in immigration - Hilary Benn

Reductions in immigration in the case of a Leave vote triumphing in the Brexit referendum are vastly overstated, according to Labour Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn.

The MP said that leaving the EU would not simply put an end to immigration, as vast levels of immigrants would still be needed for various public and private services.

“Immigration into Britain will continue whether we stay or go, as the leave campaign have now admitted,” he said, urging the leave campaign to be more honest about the necessity of immigration.

Immigration into Britain will continue whether we stay or go

“Indeed, Nigel Farage’s contradictory promises, as we saw yesterday, simply don’t add up. And anyone who thinks that voting leave will bring the numbers down significantly will in time be bitterly disappointed.”

Benn's late father, Tony, who was a firm anti-EU Labour politician, was cared for by foreign workers during his final hours. His son belives that without this core group of immigrant care workers, the NHS would find it difficult to cope.

And anyone who thinks that voting leave will bring the numbers down significantly will in time be bitterly disappointed

“In the years ahead, it will be our turn to be looked after,” Benn said. “And as well as providing that care, we will need to pay for it, which is why it is utterly irresponsible to advocate a course of action that will lead to a weaker, less strong and less prosperous economy.

“This would damage our public services and make it more difficult to deal with, as we must, the pressures that immigration brings.”

Benn was speaking as Labour's campaign trail began again on Monday in support of Britain's EU membership. He made an impassioned plea in support of the EU, citing Britain as a ntion of immigrants, referring to the "Romans to the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans, from the Jews fleeing persecution to the Irish fleeing famine and from the Windrush generation and those who came from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to work in the mills to their present day equivalents from Poland, Lithuania and Romania”.

Benn's speech comes ahead of that by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Leicester, where he hopes to persuade those voting in the referendum in the same way he persuaded many against Scottish independence.