UK Immigration News

The BBC Trust Chairman, Lord Patten, has announced that the BBC has commissioned a review of its coverage of immigration in order to investigate allegations that it does not reflect all shades of opinion equally.

The BBC has a duty to be impartial written into its charter but some commentators, particularly those on the right, have accused it of bias on a range of issues. It is accused of being broadly left-wing, pro-immigration and pro-Europe.

A new cross-party parliamentary group focussing on immigration has been established in the UK parliament. The group is chaired by the former Labour MP and immigration minister Barbara Roche and has two co-chairs; Gavin Barwell, the Conservative MP for Croydon since 2010 and Lord Dholakia; the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords. The group also includes figures from business and the unions.

Nadhim Zahawi, the UK Conservative Party's MP for Stratford-on-Avon, has said that the UK's coalition government must be careful to avoid damaging the economy by focussing too rigidly on the number of immigrants coming to the UK every year. On coming to power in 2010, the Coalition government's Home Secretary, Theresa May MP, promised to reduce net immigration from about 260,000 per year at the time to 'tens of thousands' by 2015.

Craig Calhoun, the new vice-chancellor of the London School of Economics, has joined other senior figures in the UK's university sector in calling for an end to the requirement that students from outside the European Economic Area must register with the police before they start their courses. Mr Calhoun was speaking on the day the Metropolitan Police were forced to change the rules on student registration because the system could not cope with the numbers of students waiting to be registered.

The number of applicants for Tier 1 (investor) category visas rose to a record high in the year ending on 30th June 2012. The UK Border Agency received over 400 applications during this period. This figure compares with fewer than 200 applicants in 2009. Critics say that the minimum investment should be increased.

The leader of the United Kingdom's Labour Party Ed Miliband has given an interview to the BBC's lunchtime news programme The World at One. In an interview on Thursday 4th October 2012, the opposition leader told BBC journalist Martha Kearney that he thought that immigration into the UK, particularly low-skilled immigration was 'too high'.