Vince Cable has broken Coalition ranks to accuse David Cameron of risking inflaming tensions over immigration.
The LibDem Business Secretary called the Prime Minister’s words “very unwise” and suggested they were calculated to win votes in next month’s local elections.
The Tory leader used a keynote speech to warn the UK needed “good immigration, not mass immigration”. It came just weeks after he caused a storm by attacking multiculturalism.
Mr Cable condemned the speech and appeared to accuse Mr Cameron of blatant electioneering.
“I do understand there is an election coming but talk of mass immigration risks inflaming the extremism to which he and I are both strongly opposed,” he said.
Mr Cable disowned the Prime Minister’s plans to cut immigration to tens of thousands, saying they were not Government policy but “Tory party policy”.
However, within hours he appeared to have done a U-turn, saying he backed the plans.
Mr Cameron rejected the accusation he was inflaming problems, saying he was talking about “sensible” measures.
Labour accused the Coalition of being in chaos over the row, which comes just months after Mr Cable narrowly kept his job following reports he had said he was waging war on Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul.
At the time he was in charge of deciding whether Mr Murdoch would be allowed to proceed with a multimillion takeover of broadcaster BSkyB. Many thought Mr Cable would be forced to resign, but in the end he was stripped only of some responsibilities.
The LibDems have disagreed with the Tories on immigration before, and just weeks ago party leader Nick Clegg defended multiculturalism.
The new row comes as both parties face local polls in England and Holyrood elections next month.
A poll published by Ipsos Mori yesterday showed that more than half of people think some form of cap on immigration is needed, and only one in seven oppose such a measure.
Further evidence of the parties’ attempts to emphasise their separate identities to voters was seen when Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes yesterday described the Coalition as a “practical business relationship” rather than a “meeting of minds”.
Labour’s Keith Vaz warned the split in Coalition ranks over immigration could be exploited by extremists. He said: “We are not at all clear what he (the Prime Minister) means by bad immigration.
“We understand the need to debate these issues but we should have clear definitions and some clarity as to where Government policy actually is.”
Meanwhile, Mr Cameron was accused of getting his figures wrong for the second time in less than a week. On Monday Oxford University reacted angrily when the Prime Minister accused them of only accepting one black student last year – saying that the real figure had been 26.
Yesterday, the Tory leader said net migration from the EU into Britain over the course of a year had been just 27,000.
However, the Government’s official statisticians, the Office for National Statistics, said that figure had been quoted incorrectly, and did not include countries which had joined the EU since 2004, such as Poland.
The true figure was more than twice as high, at 57,000.
Herald Scotland
