SCOTTISH Tory leader Ruth Davidson has been put in her place by Westminster bosses after calling for the party’s controversial immigration cap commitment to be scrapped.
Davidson, who is seen as a rising star in the Tory party, and even a potential future leader, used a column in The Telegraph to call for an end to “easy slogans”, saying the party needed to get rid of the longstanding manifesto call to reduce net immigration to the tens of thousands.
“Let’s treat the British public like the grown-ups they are and have the mature conversation we need,”
Davidson added.
But yesterday First Secretary of State, Damian Green, chided his Scottish colleague, telling her in no uncertain terms that the UK Government had no plans to change tack on the number of immigrants allowed in.
The SNP’s Joan McAlpine, said that despite the talk of Davidson having serious influence over the party, the London head office just wasn’t listening.
“Scotland was promised powers over immigration by the Leave campaign. The UK Government has a duty to deliver on that promise,” McAlpine said.
“This just shows how little authority Ruth Davidson has – she can make a lot of noise but nobody’s listening.”
Green was speaking in Edinburgh yesterday where he told reporters: “Ruth has an extremely interesting view point, she is quite right we need a rational debate on immigration, we’ve always needed that.
“I think the overall purpose of the Government’s immigration policy is to have immigration at sustainable levels, we do need to identify that as being in the tens of thousands.
“It is clear that one of the forces behind the Brexit vote was a feeling in some parts of the UK that immigration had been allowed to be too high for too long, and I think we should respect that.
“Immigration policy is always a balancing act between forces pushing in different directions.”
Labour’s shadow Scotland Office minister Paul Sweeney said: “The Tories are in open warfare and this further intervention from Damian Green on his visit to Scotland goes to show how divided they are.
“We face an ageing population in the future, with only a marginal growth in the working-age population, yet all the Tories are concerned about is an arbitrary immigration cap.”
In her column Davidson said the Tory proposal to cut net migration, first announced in 2010 was unrealistic.
She wrote that “we have to ask whether the target continues to be the right one”, highlighting that while the amount of pensioners in Scotland is expected to rise by 28 per cent over the next 25 years, with workers increasing by only one per cent.
Davidson also contradicted the Prime Minister by arguing for overseas students to be removed from net migration figures.
During an EU referendum campaign visit, ten days before the vote, keen Brexiteer, and now cabinet minister Michael Gove suggested Scotland could have its own points-based immigration policy after the UK left the EU.
He has, however, since changed his mind: “What we need is an immigration policy that works in the interests of the whole United Kingdom, and that is shaped in accordance with the needs of our economy,” he told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland last month.
Recent figures showed that net migration to the UK stood at 248,000.
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