We Can Control Migration Inside EU - PM

           

David Cameron has said he believes migration can be managed if the UK remains inside the EU and it would be "madness" to do so by voting to leave.

He said he did not accept that his pledge to cut immigration below 100,000 could not be achieved within the EU.

In a live Q&A on Sky News, he said leaving the EU and the single market would "trash" the UK economy.

Vote Leave's Iain Duncan Smith said the studio audience were "fed up with the scaremongering" of the Remain campaign.

The live Q&A and questions from a studio audience on Sky News was Mr Cameron's first major TV event of the EU referendum campaign.

Among the first questions he faced from Sky's political editor Faisal Islam was one on the net number of EU migrants that have arrived in the UK since he became prime minister in 2010.

Mr Cameron said about 600,000 had left this country and about 1.2 million had come to live or work here, accepting immigration was a big challenge.

Told his manifesto pledge to cut net migration into the UK to the "tens of thousands" could not be achieved while the UK remained in the EU, Mr Cameron said: "I don't accept that. I think it remains the right ambition for Britain."

Last month it emerged net migration to the UK hit 333,000 in 2015.

Mr Cameron said the UK economy had outperformed Europe but he expected immigration from and migration to the EU to come into balance as the economies of countries like France and Germany picked up.

"I'm not going to put a date on it," he said. "There are good ways of controlling migration and there are bad ways."

He said a "good way" was to ensure new arrivals did not claim unemployment benefit and left after six months if they did not have a job - as he had done in his renegotiation - as well as ensuring people "make a contribution" for four years before getting full welfare access.

He added: "It would be madness to try to do that by trashing our economy and pulling out of the single market."