UK Brexit minister: Leaving EU won’t mean economic isolation

This is the full response published by shadow home secretary Diane Abbott after new figures showed net migration hitting the second-highest number on record in the year to June.

A breakdown of ONS figures shows net migration from the European Union totalled 189,000 past year, with the majority of people arriving from Bulgaria and Romania.

There were also 289,000 people coming to Britain from outside Europe.

However, the level of immigration – people entering Britain – was at a record high of 650,000.

And the net migration figure, the difference between the numbers coming in and the numbers leaving, was 335,000, roughly the same as previous figures.

“But that it’s going to take time”.

Just over half of net migration to Britain came from non-EU nations but Romania became the most common country of last residence for immigrants arriving in Britain in 2015, accounting for 10 per cent of all new arrivals, the ONS said.

Asked about the reports during a visit to Rome, Johnson said he had told European Union ambassadors immigration had been a good thing but that it had got out of hand and Britain was leaving the bloc to be able to get back control.

The German Christian Democrat MEP Reimer Böge, the former chair of the European parliament’s budgets committee, has previously told the Guardian he envisaged that countries wishing to participate in the single market would need to pay into the common pot, or face being barred from EU programmes and funding.

“You can’t go into any negotiation expecting to get every single objective that you set out with and concede nothing along the way – it will have to be a deal that works for both sides”, he told the BBC.

“The Prime Minister and the secretary of state have repeatedly said there will be no running commentary on their Article 50 plans”, said Mr Starmer.

As her government prepares to trigger two years of formal departure talks by the end of March, May has reiterated a pledge made by her predecessor, David Cameron, to reduce annual net migration to below 100,000.

He said that the British electorate had sent a “clear message” in the referendum that they wanted more control on immigration and the government was committed to getting numbers down to “the tens of thousands”.

But if the public is to be persuaded of immigration’s benefits, Brexit clearly calls for more control over the nature of immigration to the United Kingdom and better investment in the public services and communities under pressure from population change.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has released its latest figures on long-term global migration, which are based mainly on the worldwide passenger survey (IPS).

Migration Watch UK, which campaigns for lower immigration, said the ONS statistics showed the huge pressure being put on public services by large-scale immigration. “We all agree on that”, he said.