Jobs crisis sparks immigration curb

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In his strongest comments on the subject since taking up the job earlier this month, he said that increasingly tough economic conditions made immigration "extremely thorny". And he said that the Government would not allow the population to expand endlessly.

Speaking to The Times, Mr Woolas said: "If people are being made unemployed, the question of immigration becomes extremely thorny. It's been too easy to get into this country in the past and it's going to get harder."

Mr Woolas appeared to signal a harder line approach to immigration than that offered solely by the points-based system introduced recently to attract migrants most valuable to the economy. Suggesting the need for a new upper limit on numbers, he added: "This Government isn't going to allow the population to go up to 70 million. There has to be a balance between the number of people coming in and the number of people leaving."

Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the population grew by nearly 2 million people to 60,975,000 between 2001 and 2007.

Ministers have previously resisted calls for an overall limit on immigration.

Labour former minister Frank Field, who calls for tougher controls on immigration, said the Government's position was "moving step by step".

"I think the key thing that we must now look to the Government for is that they break the link between coming here to work and getting citizenship, thereby growing the population by creating more citizens," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

Keith Best, the chief executive of the Immigration Advisory Service, said quotas were not workable in a modern trading economy.

"What are you going to say to the employer who is desperate to fill a job, but can't find anyone suitable in the European economic area?" he said. Are you going to say 'sorry, the quota has been filled, you'll have to wait till next year'? What we want to see is migration benefiting the economic and social needs of the UK, and unfortunately when politicians start interfering, you end up with a command and control economy that we used to see in eastern Europe before the fall of communism."