And the rebel ministers are winning their battle. Despite the headline promise of a “skills-based” system, there are several gaping holes in the white paper that will allow low-skilled immigration to Britain to continue, and cause an unlimited volume of supposedly skilled migration.

The cap on skilled migration will be removed. Rules requiring employers to advertise jobs in Britain before recruiting migrants will disappear. The need for employers to obtain a “sponsor licence” will be dropped. Subject to a salary threshold, any worker classed as skilled – from anywhere in the world – will be entitled to compete with British workers for the same job.

What constitutes skilled work is changing. Work permits will be made available for medium-skilled as well as high-skilled workers. The qualifications required to prove skilled worker status include A-levels and NVQs. Migrants will be free to apply for 142 additional occupations, including hairdressers, newsagents, bricklayers, gardeners and fitness instructors. All in all, this is the equivalent of five million jobs, a third of Britain’s entire full-time workforce.

The white paper risks taking us back to the bad old days under Labour. Then, almost one third of supposedly “highly-skilled” migrants were working as shop assistants, security guards, supermarket cashiers and care assistants.

When it made its recommendations, the Migration Advisory Committee insisted there was no risk of British workers being undercut by migrant workers because they proposed a £30,000 salary threshold for anybody granted a work permit. This itself is optimistic – official figures show the median salary for male workers in Britain is £29,425 – but even this has been rejected by ministers.

The white paper says the Government will “allow migration at lower salary levels” for some jobs and sectors. It promises that foreign students should, upon graduation, be “subject to a lower salary threshold”, regardless of the quality of their degree. And ministers are arguing that the salary threshold should be lower than £30,000. As a result, although the Migration Advisory Committee recommendations were made following an extensive consultation with business, there will now be another consultation with employers. Their interest is obvious: many labour market studies show higher immigration can reduce wages for people in certain jobs.

So the white paper proposes lifting the cap on skilled migration, expands the definition of skilled work, and makes British workers compete for millions more jobs. It acknowledges that unskilled immigration will continue anyway through family visas, the asylum system and labour mobility schemes. And it confirms that we have more than 1.5 million low-skilled migrant workers already in Britain.