THE Labour MP Frank Field has accused ministers of staging a “gigantic bluff” over new laws to curb the growing numbers of migrants entering Britain.

Field said Gordon Brown’s much-trumpeted controls on work permits for overseas workers would entirely fail to defuse the UK’s “population time bomb”.

The former Labour welfare minister dismissed claims by the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, that a points system would keep the population below 70m.

“We cannot afford to let our population grow at the extraordinary pace now officially forecast. The pressures on our public services and communities would be too great to bear,” Field said.

“This time bomb must be defused, and that requires radical action now. Government claims that they are taking effective action are no more than a gigantic bluff.”

Projections of the UK population show a rise to 70m by 2028, with 70% of this due to immigration, which is running at 237,000 a year, up fivefold on the 1997 figure.

Smith and Phil Woolas, her immigration minister, have said the work permits will keep the population below 70m.

However, this weekend Field released research showing that even if all 96,000 overseas work permits granted annually were refused, the UK population would still rise from the present 61m to more than 70m later this century.

The new research, commissioned by the cross-party parliamentary group on immigration, which Field co-chairs, claims that existing work permit controls would only cut the number of migrants given work visas by 12%, or just 11,500.

The research shows that in order for the population not to reach 70m, immigration would have to fall by 190,000 a year.

However, ministers recognise that imposing any kind of immigration quota is taboo in Labour circles.

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