The shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, has pledged to treat citizens from the EU and the rest of the world equally as part of Labour’s vision for a post-Brexit immigration system, saying that “a fully qualified doctor from Pakistan will be treated just like a fully qualified doctor from Poland”.

In a speech at Portcullis House in Westminster on Thursday, Abbott announced proposals to overhaul the work visa policy in the UK, which is currently structured with a range of tiers reflecting different employment categories.

The proposed regime under a Labour government would offer rights of work, residency and accelerated citizenship to a range of professions, workers and those creating employment who want to come to Britain, based on the needs of the economy.

The Guardian understands that a Labour government would scrap the cap on skilled migrants, although this was not explicitly stated in the speech.

“We have economic needs that dictate we need migrants, to help tackle skills and labour shortages,” Abbott said. “I am announcing that Labour in government will establish a completely reformed work visa policy. This policy will sit alongside the existing visas for business trips, students, visitors and tourists.

“We will avoid the idiocy of preventing doctors and nurses from coming here to take up job offers. Under our new work visa system, anyone with specified, bona fide skills can come here to work.”

She continued: “The new, integrated work visa allows us to offer rights of work and residency and accelerated citizenship to a range of professions, workers and those creating employment who want to come here. It will be available to all those we need to come here, whether it is doctors or scientists or care workers.

“This will apply across a range of jobs, skills and professions. People coming to take up specific job offers, where it can be shown that those jobs cannot be filled by workers already resident here, will be able to come here.”

Q&A What are enforced departures? Show Hide There are three layers of state-enforced or enforceable departures of immigrants from the UK: deportations, administrative removals and voluntary departures. Deportations apply to people and their children whose removal is deemed 'conducive to the public good' by the home secretary. They can also be recommended by a court.

Administrative removals refer to cases involving the enforced removal of non-citizens who have either entered the country illegally, outstayed a visa, or violated the conditions of their leave to remain. Voluntary departures are people against whom enforced removal has been initiated; the term 'voluntary' simply describes how they leave. There are three sub-categories: a) Those who depart via assisted voluntary return schemes.

b) Those who make their own travel arrangements and tell the authorities. c) Those who leave without notifying the government.

A report from the migration advisory committee on the impact of EU migration on the British labour market, due to be published on Tuesday, is expected to inform the government’s post-Brexit immigration policy. Ministers have delayed the publication of an immigration white paper until after the report is released.

Abbott said policy was “still up in the air” due to the government’s “mishandling” of Brexit negotiations. But she said EU migrants would be treated the same as non-EU migrants.

“So in terms of our immigration system, once trade deals have been struck and we have established who we would like to come here, there will be no unequal treatment based on which countries people are coming from,” she said.

“A fully qualified doctor from Pakistan will be treated just like a fully qualified doctor from Poland, and vice versa. The same is true of how we will allocate work visas and the rights that will be attached to them.”

Abbott repeated her criticism of the government’s role in the Windrush scandal, in which British residents were wrongly targeted by the Conservatives’ hostile environment policy and in some cases were detained and deported.

She also reiterated Labour plans to rip up the 2014 Immigration Act, in which many of the hostile environment policies were enshrined in law.

Abbott pledged to end “rip-off” Home Office fees in visa and immigration cases, as highlighted by the Guardian, including the cost of registration fees for children. Registration is the process where someone who has an existing right to British citizenship applies to obtain it. It costs £1,012 to register under-18s, up from £500 in 2011. In 2014, discounts for a second or additional child were scrapped.

Net migration from EU to UK at lowest level since December 2012 Read more

“Exorbitant charges hit the poor and those with larger families the hardest,” Abbott said. “It is discriminatory and unjustifiable. As people come here to work, they pay taxes. They already make a contribution … Labour will end this rip-off. Charges will be reviewed so that they closer reflect the actual cost.”

The shadow home secretary also pledged to remove illegal immigrants more efficiently but to shift the focus to preventing such people from arriving in the UK by increasing the number of Border Force officers.

On the government’s target to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands – a goal the government has consistently failed to meet since 2010 – Abbott said: “When they continually fail to meet their target, and without ever showing how they will meet it, then we are entitled to be a little jaundiced about its real purpose. But when they continue to suggest it is all the fault of EU migration, when non-EU migration – the bit they do control – alone is more than double the total target, we are entitled to call it out.”