Jacob Rees-Mogg has firmly rejected Labour’s claims that the Conservative government conducted an “open borders experiment”, whilst acknowledging significant failures in immigration policy.
Speaking on BBC’s Question Time, the GB News star and ex-Conservative MP directly countered recent accusations, stating: “No, there was not an open borders experiment, but immigration policy failed badly.”
Jacob offered a frank apology to the British public: “As a Conservative, let me apologise to people. We failed, and we were culpable for that because we were in charge.”
The former cabinet minister’s comments came in response to Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s recent criticism of the government’s immigration record.
Jacob Rees-Mogg said Starmer was wrong to suggest the Tories ran an open border policy
BBC / POOL
Explaining the high immigration numbers, Jacob pointed to specific policy decisions made during the pandemic period.
“It was partly a response to Covid and there was a feeling it would be hard to find people to fill jobs,” he told the BBC programme.
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Jacob Rees-Mogg spoke on BBC’s Question Time
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Keir Starmer hit out at the previous Tory government
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He highlighted how economic considerations had influenced policy decisions, noting: “It was thought migration would boost growth and allow tax revenues to rise to pay for public services.”
The ex-Conservative MP acknowledged the government’s responsibility for the situation, stating: “The terrible thing is we had control, but we let far too many people in.”
In a direct challenge to official statistics, Jacob contested the accuracy of pre-Brexit immigration figures.
“The pre-Brexit figures, it was thought about two million people would register as a right to stay here post-Brexit, the figure was about five million when it was finally created,” he told Question Time.
He specifically targeted the ONS’s data collection methods, declaring their previous figures were “completely wrong” regarding EU migration.
“I do dispute they were lower before, because they were simply wrong,” Rees-Mogg added, questioning the reliability of historical immigration data.
Jacob’s defence came after Starmer launched a scathing attack on the Conservative government’s immigration record.
Speaking at a press conference, Starmer had accused the Tories of deliberately liberalising immigration policies, claiming: “This happened by design not accident.”
The Labour leader argued: “Policies were reformed deliberately to liberalise immigration, Brexit was used for that purpose to turn Britain into a one nation experiment in open borders.”
Starmer described it as a “different order of failure” from the Conservative government, stating: “Time and again the Conservative Party promised they would get the numbers down. Time and again they failed.”
