Immigration is back on the agenda. This vindicates the courageous stance adopted by Michael Howard at the last election, when he became the first senior politician for decades to pledge sensible controls.

The Government has completely lost its way over immigration. The last Home Secretary was sacked over it; the current Home Secretary admits the Immigration Service is not "fit for purpose".

In 2004 the Government guessed only 13,000 people from the EU accession states would come to work here. Now, barely 18 months later, they admit 427,000 took jobs here. They do not know how many more are self-employed, but guess an overall total of 600,000.

Add to that more than a million non-EU immigrants since Labour came to power and you get a figure approaching 2 million - equivalent to creating a city the size of Birmingham every decade and the main cause of the population breaching 60 million.

We can have little confidence in Government estimates of the number of Bulgarian and Romanians likely to arrive when their countries also join the EU. Migration Watch, which got it right in 2004, has estimated it could be as many as a further 600,000.

I recognise the importance of many of these people to the proper functioning of our economy, especially seasonal agricultural workers.

But with unemployment also rising, up 100,000 over the past 12 months, we are reaching saturation point.

This island, already one of most densely populated countries in Europe, is facing huge pressures on housing, health and education. We must have proper border controls and quotas for immigrants.