UK: Conservative leader Michael Howard sparked fresh controversy last night when he again promised tighter immigration controls, and suggested Britain might learn lessons from Ireland.
The dispute over Irish policy came after Prime Minister Tony Blair joined Britain's highly-charged election debate to accuse the Conservatives of indulging in a politics of desperation in seeking to exploit people's fears over the issue.
During a BBC1 interview with Jeremy Paxman, Mr Howard claimed Ireland had responded to the enlargement of the EU by drastically reducing - from 50,000 to 2,500 - the number of work permits granted each year to non-EU nationals.
Mr Howard said: "Ireland, taking into account the number of people who can come here from eastern Europe, has reduced the number of work permits it gives out from 50,000 a year to 2,500 a year. I think there may be lessons we can learn from Ireland."
A spokeswoman for the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment expressed surprise at Mr Howard's assertion, and said there were no limits on work permits, and that there had been no change of policy.
However a Conservative spokesman quoted the department's website, and a statement by the former minister Mary Harney in Mr Howard's defence.
The spokesman said the website showed there had been 47,550 work permits issued in 2003, and said that following the expansion of the EU there had been a significant reduction in the number of permits issued.
The spokesman then quoted a report from EU Business of January 7th, 2004, saying that following enlargement work permits would be restricted to highly-skilled and specialist workers.
Ms Harney was quoted as telling RTÉ radio: "I think we will be back to the kind of numbers we had when I took up office 6½ years ago, when we were granting about 2,500 a year."
While conceding that Mr Howard had been mistaken to suggest this target had been met, the Conservative spokesman said: "If there has been no change in (Irish) policy that is not what you would infer from the previous minister or deduce from reading their website or from the figures which have halved."
The Conservatives were anxious that a dispute over these figures should not detract from what they considered a successful performance by Mr Howard in the last of Mr Paxman's three interviews with the main party leaders.
Earlier yesterday, in his first major intervention in the most controversial debate of the election, Mr Blair said: "The Tory party have gone from being a one-nation party to being a one-issue party in this campaign."
And he accused Mr Howard of using the issue in the hope of persuading people that government was ignoring their views because of "political correctness".
Mr Blair was speaking in the symbolically-significant Labour marginal of Dover as Mr Howard repeated his view that immigration into Britain had to be limited for the sake of the country's security, good community relations and in managing the demands on the public services.
Their clash came ahead of today's launch of the British National Party's manifesto demanding an end to all immigration.
The far-right party is fielding a record number of candidates in what it hopes will prove a springboard to next year's local elections in England.
Joining battle on an issue on which the Conservatives still retain the advantage in the polls, Mr Blair said he agreed with Mr Howard that it was not racist to discuss immigration.
But he asserted: "I never want this to be an issue that divides our country, that sets communities against each other. We are a tolerant, decent nation. That tolerance should not be abused. But neither should it be turned on its head.
"It is the duty of government to deal with issues of both asylum and immigration.
But they should not be exploited by a politics that in desperation seeks refuge in them."