By Tim Montgomerie
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Yesterday morning I blogged some general thoughts on Cameron's immigration speech that he'll give later today. We now have some more detail on the PM's prepared remarks.
His speech will have three themes overall: (i) Cutting immigrants' access to benefits; (ii) ending 'something for nothing' benefits'; and (iii) cracking down on illegal immigration.
Taking each in turn this is what we expect the PM to announce:
The PM's overall message is summarised in this advance extract (my emphases):
“While I have always believed in the benefits of immigration I have also always believed that immigration has to be properly controlled. As I have long argued, under the last government this simply wasn’t the case. Immigration was far too high and badly out of control. Net migration needs to come down radically from hundreds of thousands a year to just tens of thousands*. And as we bring net migration down so we must also make sure that Britain continues to benefit from it. That means ensuring that those who do come here are the brightest and the best the people we really need with the skills and entrepreneurial talent to create the British jobs and growth that will help us to win in the global race**. And it also means ensuring that the system is fair so that we support the aspirations of hard working people who want to get on in life***. This is about building that aspiration nation**** I have been talking about.”
* Last week Vince Cable insisted this goal was not Coalition policy.
** Bingo for catchphrase one.
*** Bingo for catchphrase two.
**** Bingo for catchphrase three!