UK vows tougher immigration laws

LONDON: British Prime Minister David Cameron pledged a fresh clampdown on immigration in the Queen’s Speech yesterday, seeking to bolster his right-wing credentials against the rise of the UK Independence Party (UKIP).
The measures were at the heart of a string of solidly Conservative proposals in the speech, which sets out the British government’s legislative plans for the year ahead but is read out by Queen Elizabeth II in a ceremony full of historical symbolism.
Heir to the throne Prince Charles and his wife Camilla attended the state opening of parliament alongside the queen in a sign of their increasing role as the 87-year-old monarch scales back some of her duties.
Ministers drew up the address before the anti-immigration, euroskeptic UKIP won a quarter of the vote in local elections last week, but its key themes still appeared designed to confront the growing threat to Cameron’s Conservatives from the upstart party.
“Our resolve to turn our country around has never been stronger,” Cameron and his Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said in a foreword to the speech.
The speech itself referred several times to “people who work hard” and offered a strong conservative message to appeal to the traditional and often older voters who have flocked to UKIP, many of them former Tories alienated by Cameron’s shift to the center ground.
Read out by the queen in a stately monotone, the address restated the government’s commitment to restore Britain’s faltering economic growth, slash the deficit and boost jobs through investing in infrastructure and helping small businesses.