A new inquiry into whether immigrants jump council housing queues was announced by Trevor Phillips yesterday as the row over immigration policy intensified.

The chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission said there was a widespread public perception that new migrants were given unfair advantages to which they were not entitled. In a speech in Birmingham, Mr Phillips argued that rather than trying to suppress the debate, the Government needed to be better informed with robust, independent evidence.

He announced that the organisation would work with the Local Government Association (LGA) to commission an independent study by “dispassionate academics” to look at whether the housing system was being abused to the detriment of anyone - including white families.

“If there is evidence that it is, then we have the powers and the mandate to stop the abuse and we will do so. If there is no evidence then we can properly say that this insinuation should play no part in next year’s elections.”

David Cameron stepped up the pressure on the Government over the issue of immigration as it emerged that the number of British people in work has fallen in the past two years.

Foreign workers wholly account for the rise in employment from the spring of 2005, official statistics show. In the latest challenge to ministers’ claims over the benefits of migration, a written Commons answer has disclosed that 540,000 nonBritons took up posts in this country, offsetting a decrease of 270,000 in the number of British workers over the same period.

Mr Cameron accused the Government of panicking and repeated that he wanted a “substantial cut” in the number of nonEU migrants. “About 200,000 people, net, are coming into this country each year. I think that’s too high, and we would like to see a substantial cut,” he said.

Liam Byrne, the Immigration Minister, challenged Mr Cameron to state what his annual limit would be.

While welcoming the Tory leader’s attempts to strip the immigration debate of “racial toxicity”, Mr Phillips did not agree with his proposals to cap immigration levels.

“A general cap on migrant numbers will do little to solve [the] problems,” said Mr Phillips. “Shutting out the underachieving Pakistani, Turkish or Somali newcomers also locks out the hugely overachieving Indian or Chinese star pupil; and a cap would have little impact on the most worrying emergent group of underperformers – poorest white boys.”

Sir Simon Milton, chairman of the LGA, said: “The LGA is happy to support Trevor Phillips’s initiative. We think it is in the public interest.

“If there are examples of people receiving unfair treatment on grounds of race or nationality, we want it out in the open.”

Mr Phillips also backed the LGA’s demand for a £250 million emergency cash fund for local councils that are struggling with big migrant rises.

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