BRITISH prime minister Theresa May plans to stick to her pledge to reduce annual net migration to below 100,000 a year, she said today (April 20), as her Conservative party put together its manifesto for a snap election in June.
May has previously backed her predecessor David Cameron's pledge to cut the figure to the "tens of thousands", but there had been speculation in some newspapers that the Tories might not include the promise in their manifesto.
Earlier this morning, a senior government minister and close ally of May told Sky News it was "not about putting numbers on it".
Net migration has consistently been running at around three times the government's target, with the latest figures in February putting the level at 273,000.
Asked during a visit to a business in London on Thursday if she would include the number in the manifesto, she told the BBC: "We want to see sustainable net migration in this country, I believe that sustainable net migration is in the tens of thousands.
"Leaving the European Union enables us to control our borders in relation to people coming from the EU as well as those who are coming from outside the EU."
(Reuters)
Forsyth was awarded a CBE for services to literature in 1997Getty Images
