Rishi Sunak says he is ‘crystal clear’ that he wants to reduce immigration – UK politics live

Latest updates: prime minister says he wants level of net immigration to fall below the 500,000 it was when he took over

Good morning and welcome to the UK politics live blog. We start with news that Rishi Sunak has set a new goal of bringing migration down below the level he “inherited”, which was about 500,000 net arrivals a year when he became prime minister.

He redefined his target on immigration after earlier in the week backing away from the Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto promise to reduce it below the level then of about 220,000.

I’m not going to put a precise figure on it but I do want to bring them down.

The numbers are too high and we want to bring them down. Now, the numbers last year were impacted by the fact that we welcomed Ukrainian refugees to the UK. Again, that’s something I think we are proud of.