State organisations like the BBC are deliberately preventing a serious debate on immigration according to a new report by the think tank MigrationWatch. The group warned that pro-immigration parts of the public sector are blocking government attempts to curb the numbers of new arrivals in the UK.

The report said that “economic liberals” in departments like the Treasury were willing to support widespread immigration “irrespective of the impact of immigration on population growth and on the lower paid”. It also claimed the chronic underfunding of the Home Office was the reason for backlog of 368,000 immigration cases.

Despite tough talk the coalition government has spent just 0.25 percent of its total budget on immigration controls. The report said: “The total budget for immigration control in 2014/15 was £1.8 billion. This is around 0.25 per cent of the total government expenditure of £700 billion.”

It continued: “This is clearly inadequate given the scale of the problem and the depth of public concern. Underfunding is one of the primary reasons why the Home Office has been unable to address the very large backlog of cases that it inherited from the previous government… There are also some wider matters which will continue to pose difficulties for an effective immigration policy.

“They include … a strong bias in the BBC in favour of immigration, combined with a reluctance even to address the case for reducing immigration.”

Lord Green of Deddington, MigrationWatch chairman, told the Daily Mail: “The battle for public opinion has been decisively won in the face of a powerful immigration lobby. This is the first time that a government has made a serious effort to get numbers down.

“They have undeniably made valuable progress but continued strong efforts, led from the top, are essential. These efforts must succeed if the public are not to lose faith in our political system.”

The report concluded that the views of “economic liberals, reinforced by pressure from some companies” had also led to pressure for more migrant labour “without always having a proper appreciation of the pressures placed on social services”.

David Cameron had pledged to get net migration down to the “tens of thousands” during his premiership, but this has proved impossible as EU nationals have the automatic right to move to the UK.