Kemi Badenoch will be “defined” by the first “clanger” she makes as Tory leader, Baroness Davidson has said.

The Tory peer said Ms Badenoch, who replaced Rishi Sunak earlier this month, had to be “humble and work bloody hard” in her role following the Conservatives’ worst-ever general election performance.

Speaking to Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Baroness Davidson criticised the Tory leader for choosing to give a speech at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) on the impact of Labour’s decision to increase employers’ national insurance contributions in the budget.

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During the speech, Ms Badenoch refused to say whether she would reverse the national insurance hike – despite calling it a “tax on jobs”.

Baroness Davidson told Rigby: “If I was in charge of the UK Tory party right now, if I wanted to do a business speech, I wouldn’t have done it at the CBI.

“I would have done it at the Federation of Small Businesses – the people that are most affected by this national insurance change.

“I would have been damn sure what my policy was going to be and what it was that I was going to be able to tell them.”

The Tory peer, who led the Scottish Conservatives from 2011 to 2019, said the job of an Opposition leader was to “go out and hustle” for votes.

She added: “It’s to speak to people… it’s to apologise for the stuff we got wrong, it’s to show people that we’ve changed, and it’s to start putting together slowly, bit by bit, a policy platform that can lead us into the next election in five years’ time.”

Baroness Davidson said there had been “so many open goals” for Ms Badenoch to take against the prime minister, including over his decision to scrap winter fuel payments for the majority of pensioners.

“Why is she not going off and speaking to pensioners?” Baroness Davidson said.

“We’ve got great stories to tell [on the winter fuel allowance]. Now, as we’re coming into this cold snap, she could have been doing something about that.”

She added: “She can’t be high-handed about this and she can’t be lazy. She has to be humble and she has to work bloody hard!”

Asked whether she thought Ms Badenoch was “lazy”, Baroness Davidson said: “I don’t know what her personal tempo of operations is and how she runs her office, she might be doing tonnes of things that we’re not seeing, but there’s a problem in that. We’re not seeing them.

“There is a massive klaxon going off in my head here because if Labour have worked out that she’s not defining herself, it doesn’t take an awful lot of steps to decide, ‘Well, we can define her ourselves’.

“And it will not be in a way that is helpful to the Conservative Party. They’ll wait for the first clanger and the first clanger is what will define her.”

Sir Keir Starmer has accused the Tories of using Brexit to deliberately run an “open borders experiment” in the UK.

The prime minister said the British people are “owed an explanation” after revised figures showed net migration reached a record high of almost one million under the previous government’s watch.

Follow live: Spending on asylum jumps to record high

Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows net migration for the year to June 2023 reached 906,000 – a big jump on what was previously thought and four times higher than pre-Brexit figures in 2019.

In a speech from Downing Street, Sir Keir said: “Failure on this scale isn’t just bad luck. It isn’t a global trend or taking your eye off the ball.

“No, this is a different order of failure. This happened by design, not accident.

“Policies were formed deliberately to liberalise immigration. Brexit was used for that purpose – to turn Britain into a one nation experiment in open borders.”

The ONS’s previous estimate for the year to 2023 was 740,000, which at the time was still a record amount.

The stats show net migration – the difference between people coming to live in and leaving the UK – is down 20% this year from the revised high of 2023, standing at an estimated 728,000.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch yesterday admitted her party, which made repeated pledges to cut net migration by tens of thousands during their 14 years in office, had got immigration “wrong”.

But Sir Keir said their failures were “unforgivable” and can’t be separated from the Conservative Party’s “refusal to do the hard yards on skills, on welfare reform, on giving our young people opportunities”.

“Clearly the vast majority of people who entered this country did so to plug gaps in our workforce,” he added.

In his press conference, Sir Keir said Labour would reform the points-based immigration system to require companies that are heavily reliant on foreign workers to also train British people.

This will go alongside a crackdown on abuse of the visa system, including banning employers who flout the rules from hiring overseas staff for two years.

‘Landmark’ deal struck with Iraq

Sir Keir’s speech came as Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced a “landmark” deal with Iraq, intended to crack down on the people smuggling fuelling illegal immigration.

Iraq is one of the top 10 countries people travelling in small boats come from (3,002 in the year to June). Around £300k of UK government money will be given to the country to help it with border security and law enforcement.

Home Office data released on Thursday also showed the cost of the UK’s asylum system has risen to £5bn, the highest level of spending on record, and up by more than a third in a year.

On Wednesday, Tory leader Ms Badenoch said there had been a “collective failure of political leaders from all parties over decades” to grasp migration, adding: “On behalf of the Conservative Party, it is right that I as the new leader accept responsibility and say truthfully, we got this wrong.”

Other Conservatives, including former home secretary Suella Braverman, sought to take credit for the numbers coming down in the year to July 2024, which the ONS said was driven mainly by a fall in the number of dependants arriving in the UK on study visas from outside the EU.

Net migration to the UK has fallen by 20% from a record 906,000 the year before, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has said.

The latest net migration figure – the difference between people coming to live in and leaving the UK – stands at an estimated 728,000 in the year to June 2024.

A total of 1.2 million people are estimated to have arrived in the UK in the year ending June 2024, while 414,000 left.

Net migration for the previous year, to June 2023, has been revised upwards by 166,000 to 906,000, making it the new highest year on record instead of 2022.

ONS director Mary Gregory said the fall in the latest year was “driven by declining numbers of dependants on study visas coming from outside the EU”.

She said the first six months of 2024 saw a decrease in the number of people arriving on work visas partly due to the salary threshold rising substantially.

There was a 19% drop in student visas in the year to September 2024 – when the university year begins – compared with the previous year.

There was a 33% decrease in worker visas in that time.

The previous Conservative government changed the rules so since January, most students have not been allowed to bring dependents with them, with exceptions only for those studying at PhD level.

In March, further changes were introduced by the Tories barring care workers and senior care workers from sponsoring dependents on the health and care worker visa.

Rishi Sunak’s Tory administration also raised the minimum salary requirement for the skilled worker visa from £26,200 to £38,700 in April, making it more difficult to obtain.

Asylum spending at record high

Home Office figures also released today show government spending on asylum in the UK reached £5.38bn in the year to April 2024 – up 36% from £3.95bn in the previous year and the highest level of spending on record.

At the end of September 2024, there were 97,170 asylum cases (relating to 133,409 people) awaiting an initial decision, which is 22% fewer than the year before, but 13% higher than at the end of the previous quarter.

The latest net migration figures, from July 2023 to June 2024, cover the Conservatives’ last year in office, with Labour winning the election at the beginning of July.

The data comes a day after new Tory leader Kemi Badenoch admitted her party had failed on migration.

“We got this wrong. I more than understand the public anger on this issue, I share it,” she said on Wednesday.

Conservatives say drop is due to their policies

Former Conservative home secretary James Cleverly said: “Today’s migration figures are the first to show the impact of the changes that I brought in as home secretary.

“Numbers are still too high, but we see the first significant downward trend in years. Changes that Labour opposed and haven’t fully implemented.”

Suella Braverman, the Tory home secretary before Mr Cleverly, also claimed credit for the drop in net migration, saying it “is a result of the changes I fought for and introduced in May 2023”.

“That’s when we started to turn the tide,” she said.

“But 1.2 million arrivals a year is still too high. This is unsustainable and why we need radical change.”

Labour said the latest migration figures showed the government had started the “hard graft” of tackling the issue, and was “cleaning up the Conservatives’ mess”.

A party spokesman said: “In their own words, the Tories broke the immigration system.

“On their watch, net migration quadrupled in four years to a record high of nearly one million, despite saying they’d lower it to 100,000.

“They are an open borders party who lied time and again to the public. This is the chaos Labour inherited and any crowing from the Tories should be seen in that light.”

41% drop in study or work visas

Figures for net migration in 2022 were also revised, increasing from 607,000 to 754,000, while 2021 changed from 221,000 to 254,000.

The revisions are due to the ONS continuing to review its net migration figures as more complete data becomes available, as well as improving how it estimates the migration behaviour of people arriving in the UK from outside the EU.

The latest figures show a small increase in emigration, but the fall was mostly attributed to a decrease in immigration.

Those entering the UK as dependents of people on work or study visas dropped by 41% for each.

Main applicants for work visas decreased by 7%, while main applicants for study visas dropped by 9%.

The ONS said the fall in net migration was also driven by a rise in long-term emigration – people leaving the UK – particularly of those who came to the country on study visas.

“This is likely a consequence of the large number of students who came to the UK post-pandemic now reaching the end of their courses,” it said.