SOUTH DORSET MP Richard Drax has issued a stark warning on immigration, insisting: “I believe, as do many of my constituents, that this country is full.”

Mr Drax made his comments in support of a House of Commons motion calling for the UK population to be stabilised as close as possible to its present level. The Conservative MP, who backs rigorous controls on immigration, said: “I hope that we will have a firm and fair system so that the people who come into this country have visas and references and money in a bank account.”

The Commons debate was brought by the backbench business committee after an online petition, backed by 140,000 people, was co-sponsored by Labour MP Frank Field and Tory MP Nicholas Soames, grandson of legendary wartime leader Winston Churchill. Mr Drax, who runs the family’s Purbeck estate, said: “We need only to look at the housing debate that is going on right now.

“We are having to reconsider the planning laws to reduce the restrictions on green belt development because we need to build so many homes. We are full – that is the practicality of the situation in which we find ourselves – and we have to do something about it.”

He also told the House of Commons that a proper debate on immigration had been a long-time coming.

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