[Christmas Dynasnow]

Farage: This is a bold, innovative policy

Nigel Farage hailed a “bold, innovative policy”, adding: “I can hear the multinationals wailing already because you’re quite right, we have become addicted to cheap foreign labour.”

Mr Farage said legal migration was the “really big elephant in the room” amid an understandable focus on the Channel crisis.

“I really do believe this should be the immigration voters. You ask voters, what are their priorities? The subject of immigration has gone from fifth a few months ago to second or third depending on which pollster you look at.

“So what are the big priorities of the electorate? Well, cost of living clearly is one of them. What greater cost of living is there for the average family, for ordinary folk, in this country than the cost of either renting a property or the cost of buying a property? It is the biggest capital outlay that people face.

“We need to build one new property every two minutes just to accommodate current levels of net migration.”