It's a historic moment that marks the end off the free movement of people.

From January, the 1st 2021 a new immigration system based on qualifications and earnings will operate in the UK.

Under the plans, workers who don't have the equivalent of a levels or Scottish hires will no longer get visas.

A salary threshold for workers wanting to come to the UK would be set at £25,600.

But professions facing a shortage of workers such as nursing will be allowed in on a lower figure of just over 20,000.

On a scheme to bring in seasonal agriculture, workers will be expanded.

The home secretary says the changes will boost the economy on attract the brightest and best.

Our political editor Gary Given reports, is in no time we took back control of our immigration policy.

We add a population the size of Newcastle every year.

Concerned about immigration, help to deliver a victory to the leave campaign, Britain's out government wants voters to feel their message in the referendum is being acted on.

Yes, we will bring overall numbers down by reducing the number of people with low skills come into the United Kingdom, so skilled workers above a pay floor can come to the country if they've got a promise of a job.

But those classified as unskilled can't put up your hands.

If you voted for Brexit, you voted to leave Cafe in Stratford upon Avon this morning.

So they like the sound of what the government is announcing.

I think we've got to try it on.

And then if it doesn't work, maybe Alexis people in way should be more like Australia, where you have to speak English job.

You can't get benefits way have come people narrow country who need jobs on their their hopes, their forthem on they should be with people serving them young Bulgarians who aren't convinced the local workforce will step in to serve.

I don't think the English people, they would like Thio work this job while we were working in group restaurant and most of us actually all of us were foreigner and there is no British.

People wants to work these.

Are you taking English British people's jobs?

I wouldn't say no, I don't think so.

There are lots of jobs.

The hospitality industry was joined by other sectors, including social care and construction, pleading that the government to relax its planned rules at least give them more time to adapt beyond the end of the year deadline.

You take the care sector, for example.

There are 100,000 vacancies right now as we speak.

So how the care sector is going to be able to recruit the people that they need as quickly a CZ is going to be required is going to be challenging.

We want to be able to build bridges and roads and railways, and there's an infrastructure revolution that we need way haven't aging population well, I think that is the conversation that we need to have Government is the conversation that we need to have.

Secretary suggested that conversation wasn't necessary if those employers recruit from the millions of Britons not in work and not seeking where.

There are 8.45 million British people in the United Kingdom economically inactive across the country in different parts of the messages get on your bike.

Well, the messages we will be working with businesses and employers to invest in people and in schools.

But the government's own numbers suggest Of those 8.5 1,000,000 a big chunk of students and the others are sick, many also looking after their families.

Others are retired, making the pool of what the government statisticians call discouraged workers.

Actually 33,000 by the Thames.

These were once the offices of the leave campaign, where some would say this all started.

You were working that building over there, the vote leave headquarters.

This is the culmination of something that started there in the buildup to the referendum card played in the referendum, and immigration is now neutralized.

There's an issue you think to a larger guy thing.

Yes, we saw that people don't actually my on focus solely on numbers.

You know, they are old hundreds.

Thousands figure that we saw trotted out in a time when we ask, you couldn't even control.

That focuses more on control.

And today's announcement by the government they live is exactly that.

This is not the end of the debate over immigration.

Ultimately, it was about numbers more than nothing else.

I'm just not sure the year down the line two years down the line that anything with that is actually gonna change some industries still hope the government could show flexibility and loosen immigration controls over time.

Government insists that no need to do that.

Employers must recruit and train better and pay more while joining me Now from Westminster, the conservative MP John Redwood on In Studio in the studio we have the economist fighter Shaheen, who stood for labor but lost in the last election on Is director off the lettering think tank class fighter Shaheen.

This is what people, though, is it for Well, it is certainly a policy that isn't driven by evidence or economic need or society or history off immigration as well as immigration.

So you have to wonder where it comes from.

And I think it is driven by xenophobia, and we see it in the context of a government that has come in that has said, voted against child refugees, being ableto be united with their families.

You know, we've seen this week that they hired someone that was into eugenics.

You know, they keep sending out this message off xenophobia on dhe.

When you look at the facts alongside what they're doing, it just doesn't go together.

You know, if you think about what this is meant to sold.

It doesn't solve low wages.

What's wrong with putting those 8.5 1,000,000 people who are currently being old, being sick, looking after members of their family to work?

I mean, because they're doing other things right?

They're sick.

They're caring for people on.

Do you know it's a nonsense number?

Really?

When you look at it and you know again, if you I want to do something about wages if you want to do something about jobs, you don't focus on immigration.

You have to deal with the issues in the labor market that more about trade unions and the impact of the crash and austerity.

So, John, why do you think these 8.5 1,000,000 people who pretty Patel talked about today are suddenly going to start applying for jobs that they're currently apply for?

What I welcome about today is is the vision of a better paid, more productive workforce, and it's mainly about getting people better paid because they're more skilled and they're supported by better investment in the care home or in the office or in the factory or wherever it is soothing can as well be.

Isn't that a great Yes, of course.

I won't care workers to be paid more on dhe.

It has to be paid for out of productivity gains, higher quality work, more training, more support for them and above all, more investment in equipment and computers and so forth.

That kind of system in their task.

We've got a great modern vision for a better society in which people have better, more rewarding jobs that are better paid.

And we're trying to leave the employers with us.

We don't like this model where they don't mechanize.

They don't put the support behind their workers.

They don't invest in.

You failed to do.

I mean, it was cleaning them.

Isn't it doing simple tasks like that that can't be done by Robles?

Well, the basic care is a very skilled job on it needs to be properly rewarded.

But there are all sorts of AIDS to cleaning and transporting and handling and so forth where you do need decent equipment, and you certainly need very good information systems to know what the needs of an individual is, and that could make the care worker more effective and provide a better quality of care is not just about cost.

It's about quality above all else, the best.

The best business is the best.

Businesses invest in both their people and in their technology, because what it should be driven by is a passion to have higher quality there in the care, home, high quality service in the office or whatever it is.

We've had the conservatives in government for 10 years, and it's been in the gift to pay higher wages for care workers.

It's been in their gift to invest in nurses bursaries, for instance.

Let's talk about my old teacher that I saw that hasn't had an inflation and be in pay rise for 10 years.

That's not because of immigration.

That's because the public sector pay cap.

So you know this is a distraction.

And how perfect for the etonians that have undermines wages in this country undermined workers rights in this country to make us focus on the Romanians rather than what they're up to it.

And it's frustrating to see this policy also because we are limiting ourselves.

What we are doing is also saying that we can't move abroad.

All of my friends, all of the people that have moved to Spain.

Spanish lift that you know, Is that the point?

So we have to concentrate on this, This new system, I mean So, John, you know, people might sort of wonder whether the actual immigration numbers are gonna come down as a result of this system.

Why are you so sure that they will?

We're going to ask me that Yet the Home Secretary said she she on discipline in numbers.

Well, not everybody does, but there are.

There are certainly very great pressures on housing, and public service is particularly in certain areas.

And we do have to have a pace to change, which is acceptable to the people who already live here.

And we want to use the talents of the people, really live here to the full and get them into more of those better paid jobs.

But the home secretary on the government has it within their power to control the numbers rather better than we were able to when we had the unfair asymmetric system where we had to accept anybody from the European Union.

But we had to be tougher on on Europe.

I rather welcome the fact that we're gonna be fair to the whole world.

I don't think people from Ship Jamaica should be behind in the queue people from the continent of Europe, for example.

So this would be a fair system.

So this will allow Asians and Africans coming to Britain on the government will decide along with Parliament how many is appropriate on day will be able to flex this system because they can decide to make it more difficult to get in.

Or they can decide to make it easier to get in, depending on how many people we think we would like depending on what the needs of economy are having under our control.

So we can have a proper debate and then come to sensible decisions.

Do you think they got it slightly wrong the first time?

They'll their resources?

But it's just a short time.

I mean, do you think I mean, you seem to be saying that the there will be a re balancing so that we will get Maur people from Asia and Africa and fewer people from Europe.

Are you sure the rebalancing will be that we have fewer people from Europe because quite a lot of people came in from Europe for those very low paid jobs or came in with no job.

And one other big feature of this new scheme, which I think many people will welcome, is that when you come, you have to stay here for a bit and work here for a bit before you gain entitlement to all those benefits which were automatically provided to EU citizens under the older entrance, we couldn't even control our own benefit, sister.

Okay, Farsi Shahin.

Don't you have to accept that this is political and this is what people wanted on Dhe, if that's what they want and that they accept that there's an economic cost in terms of tax receipts or whatever, but they want it for cultural reasons.

You just got to accept that.

Well, you can just accept that.

Or you can say we should actually be trying to change people's minds on this because you're right that people say that some people, everyone, some people, say that I'm even willing to lose money to have less immigration.

Now we have to get to the heart of that because ultimately, what that is saying, what that points to our feelings of xenophobia.

That's not saying it's because of the economy, that saying, because I just feel uncomfortable with people coming here now if we invested more in our community, you don't have to be xenophobic toe wantto maintain your culture.

I mean, you know, it's interesting that we have this idea of British culture that doesn't recognize centuries off people going abroad as well, right?

We've always had a multi ethnic working class, for instance, and we're just not having that conversation.

And that's actually the fall off the Progressives and the left as well, making that argument.

But this policy will fail, just like the Caps fell, just like the the target's found.

We're gonna have more on this later in the programme.

Pfizer, Shaheen and John Robert.

Thank you very much indeed, the government's announcement of a radical overhaul of the immigration system.

How many people are allowed to come and work in this country isn't just a question about our economy, for some of the issue is about our national identity.

Over the decades, prime ministers have tried to get to grips with this highly emotive something since Caribbean family started coming to the UK in the 19 fifties.

Our politicians have danced around the issue of immigration.

Should they talk about it or shouldn't they?

And if they do, is that inevitably racist?

In the run up to her first election victory in 1979 Margaret Thatcher presented a stark assessment of the dangers of immigration.

People are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture, a cz.

Britain became a more multicultural society.

That sort of language became unacceptable, but did the ideas behind it.

In the 2005 election, the Conservatives tapped into concerns over immigration, saying it wasn't racist to talk about controls the question to voters.

Are you thinking what we're thinking?

The answer was apparently no.

Tony Blair was returned for 1/3 time, But when Gordon Brown took over his prime minister, his vision for Britain included this drawing on the talents of all the great British jobs for British workers, a message perhaps to these workers in labor's Heartlands protesting against the use of migrant labor from Europe.

Experts had forecast, but perhaps 13,000 workers would come to the UK after eight eastern European countries joined the U.

Instead, hundreds of thousands arrived by 2010 the conservatives that decided it was time to make a dramatic promise.

I would like to see net immigration in the tens of thousands, not in the hundreds of thousands, so a very significant cut.

But it wasn't cut.

In fact, it went up to more than 300,000 at one point shortly after she became prime minister, Theresa may send up the tortured nature of this debate with the now notorious phrase.

But if you believe you're a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere.

The often vitriolic referendum campaign forced arguments about immigration and race center stage.

Nigel Farage believes that this notorious breaking point poster won the vote for leave.