Robert Jenrick unleashes blistering attack on Labour migration plan and says Yvette Cooper will be 'consigned to the dustbin of history'

And Jenrick, who resigned from Rishi Sunak's Government over what he said was the then-Prime Minister's failure to curb immigration, also took aim at Starmer's Cabinet for failing to quit in protest at the plans.

Announcing the Government's new immigration policy yesterday morning, Starmer declared that migration "will fall" under his new measures.

The Prime Minister told the nation: "In a diverse nation like ours, and I celebrate that, these rules become even more important.

"Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together."

But taking aim at the Prime Minister and Home Secretary this morning, Jenrick compared Starmer's performance to a "hostage situation", claiming he "doesn't believe a word he says".

He said: "I watched Keir Starmer's press conference yesterday and frankly, I didn't believe a word of it. I don't think your viewers would, I don't think my constituents would. It looked like a hostage situation where he was reading out words that somebody else had written for him.

"We know what he believes - his life, his career, his whole worldview is about open borders. He's just another politician telling lies, saying what he thinks the public want to hear but not taking any action."

Criticising the potential of the policy, he added: "Nothing he said yesterday is going to stop the boats. It's not going to bring down legal migration to the historic levels that we want to see. It's not going to get the one million people in our country who are here illegally out of our country, to deport them.

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"It's not going to get the 12,000 foreign criminals in our prisons, out of our prisons, out of our country. What we have to do is take serious action. No more lies, serious action."

In a pointed attack on Starmer, Jenrick accused the Prime Minister of being "serially dishonest", and his new policy will simply "perpetuate the levels of frustration" felt by Britons about migration.

Jenrick added: "Keir Starmer is serially dishonest. He lied and lied at the general election, he said he wasn't going to raise taxes and then he went and did it. Just look at his life - this is the man who voted against every piece of border control legislation. He said that border control is basically racist.

"He wrote letters trying to frustrate the removal of dangerous criminals from this country back home to their own countries. He stood to be leader of the Labour Party on a platform of restoring free movement, and said that immigration was an unalloyed good for this country. You can't believe a word he says, and nobody does believe him."

Turning his attention to the wider Government, the Newark MP added the "current crop of Labour MPs don't have the backbone" to resign over immigration measures.

He told GB News: "When I was immigration minister, I campaigned to put in place measures that would reduce the number of people coming into this country. I secured the biggest changes to the system in recent memory, and I resigned when I couldn't persuade the then prime minister, Rishi Sunak, to go any further. I resigned on principle.

"And frankly, if only this current crop of Labour politicians had the backbone to do that, Yvette Cooper is just going to be yet another politician who makes promises and breaks them, she'll be consigned to the dustbin of history of Home Secretaries who doesn't fix this problem."

In an exclusive interview with GB News, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper vowed to slash "100,000 visas" in a bid to take back control of Britain’s borders.

Speaking to the People’s Channel, the Home Secretary said: “Already we’re reducing the visas that we’re issuing, that’s already happening. Already we’re increasing returns - enforced returns are up more than 20 per cent since the election.

"And these measures go further. For example, some of the measures around working visas the skilled-workers visa, the care worker visa, the settlement rules, and the English language rules - those together would mean a reduction of 100,000 fewer visas, or fewer people arriving, just as a result of those measures."