REUTERS Theresa May knows all about immigration after being Home Secretary for six years

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Elevated into the job in the mayhem following the resignation of David Cameron, she wholly accepted the referendum result – even though she had wanted the opposite – and committed herself to making a success of it. Nothing has happened in the intervening two months to suggest that the Prime Minister does not intend to stick to her word, though her suggestion yesterday that she did not favour an Australian-style points-based system for controlling migration from the EU will lead many to wonder just how serious she is. But, for the moment, Mrs May should be given the benefit of any doubt. A points-based system - though repeatedly advocated by the Leave campaign - is only one way of controlling migration and not necessarily the best. Britain already has a points-based system to deal with migrants from outside the EU and it has not proved successful.

If Mrs May and her ministers have other ideas they should start floating them now Ross Clark

Giving points for annual earnings, for example, presents no problem for many migrants taking up posts in the City, even if they are exploiting loopholes to avoid paying tax in Britain. Yet last year ­Newcastle-upon-Tyne Hospitals NHS Trust was refused permission to recruit 85 nurses from the Philippines because they failed to reach the required points. Australia’s points-based system, too, is far from perfect. For one thing it is ageist. Applicants aged between 25 and 32 are automatically awarded 30 points – nearly half of the 65 they need. Applicants over 45, on the other hand, gain no automatic points. The Australian system awards 20 points for a PhD regardless of subject, so if you are a 25-year-old with a doctorate in media studies you can already nearly book your ticket to Australia. If you are a 45-year-old brain surgeon, you still have a lot of hoops to jump through.

PA 'For one thing, Australia's points-based system is ageist,' says Ross Clark

As Home Secretary, Mrs May will have seen the inadequacies of a points-based system at close quarters. A scoring system that sounds sensible to an official drawing it up in Whitehall is not necessarily going to look so good when it is applied to the real world. What the May Government does need to spell out, however, is how it is otherwise going to control migration. One thing is for sure: for those who voted to leave the EU, migration was an important issue. It was far from the only thing that mattered – after all, migration from the EU only became a significant issue when the former Soviet Bloc countries joined in 2004, yet Euro-scepticism in Britain began well before then. But migration was an issue nonetheless and it is one which the Government must make a priority in negotiations to leave the EU. Controlling migration does not mean stopping migration. Much as frustrated Remain campaigners like to try to make out that the 52 per cent of Britons who voted out are racists, there are very few people who would not want Britain to continue being the welcoming country it has long been. Open labour markets are generally a good thing for the economy if it means employers being able to recruit staff they would otherwise struggle to find.

Yet it is quite clear to a majority of Britons that completely uncontrolled migration brings with it problems. Mass migration was forced upon Britain without any debate. The result is a surge in population that was never planned for, with an inevitable knock-on effect for public services, with schools and hospitals in some areas struggling to cope. Our housing stock is inadequate with the inevitable result that low-paid migrants have been found living in insanitary conditions in garden sheds. EU leaders could have avoided all these problems had they been less obsessive about promoting free movement. What they should have done is to say that borders would be open when a country’s GDP per head reached a certain percentage of the EU average. Had, for instance, Romanian migration been restricted until Romanians earned, say, 75 per cent of what Western Europeans earn we would not have these huge cross-border movements of people searching – often in vain – for what they see as streets paved with gold. This leads to one possible model for a post-EU British migration policy: completely free movement between Britain and countries which have similar levels of wealth, and the reintroduction of work permits for migrants from elsewhere.

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