From the Daily Torygraph...
// A major crackdown by David Cameron on immigration was unravelling rapidly today after it emerged that it would only affect a small minority of foreigners in Britain.
Government figures showed that some of the measures unveiled by the Prime Minister at a speech in Ipswich were likely only to affect a small proportion of people from within the European Union who are living in the UK.
Under repeated questioning at a near hour-long briefing for lobby journalists, shortly before Mr Cameron was due to speak, the series of announcements appeared to unravel, with Number 10 refusing to say how many migrants might be affected.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman admitted only two of the measures had actual start dates, the rest would be subject to a consultation at some point and most would only affect a minority of migrants to the UK.
He admitted that migrants from European Economic Area - which accounts for anyone from the EU plus Norway and Switzerland - only accounted for “£10million to £20million of costs” that were not recouped from other countries within the EEA.
Critics pointed out that this was only a very small part of the total National Health Service of more than £100billion.
Similarly the Number 10 spokesman also admitted that foreigners have taken fewer than one in 10 of council houses in the past four years despite initially telling reporters that “new lettings for migrants were up by 40 per cent”.
But when pressed to explain he admitted that that was a ‘proportion’ and the figures were an increase from 6.2 per cent to 9 per cent between 2007/8 and 2011/12. //
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9952452/David-Camerons-immigration-crackdown-unravels.html
That didn't take long to all fall apart.
Has this stunt raised expectations only to let everyone down and has it damaged the Conservatives?