STRICT new controls for migrant workers involving compulsory fingerprinting and an Australian-style points system will be announced today.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, will tell MPs that would-be migrants must prove that they will bring economic benefits to Britain before they are allowed into the country.

The initiative is widely seen as an attempt to outflank the Conservatives, whose immigration policies have struck a chord with voters.

However, the Tories, who are proposing also to limit the number of asylum-seekers, insisted that voters would still have a clear choice between policies. They claimed that Tony Blair had a long history of making promises on asylum that he had failed to keep.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said that the asylum system was out of control. “After eight years in power, and just months before an election, Mr Blair claims that he can fix Britain’s chaotic asylum and immigration system. It’s all talk.”

Mr Blair, writing in The Times today, calls his plans “strict controls that work”. The Prime Minister acknowledges public disquiet over asylum and immigration, calling it difficult and immensely complex.

He denies that ministers wish to avoid a debate on the issue and attacks an annual quota solely on practical grounds.

“The Tory pollsters will have told them it’s a hot issue for the public, as ours tell us,” he says. “They will also have told them that the public believes the politicians won’t discuss immigration and asylum for reasons of political correctness.

“The reason this area of policy is difficult is nothing to do with an absence of political will or political correctness. It is because the challenge of immigration and asylum is immensely complex. Every wealthy country in the world has it.”

But traditional Labour supporters and racial equality campaigners were alarmed by the initiative and its timing.

Sir Bill Morris, former leader of the Transport and General Workers Union, said: “What we are faced with is a sort of bidding war between the two main political parties about who can be nastiest to asylum-seekers. This is a debate we need to have. My only concern is that we seem to have it only at election time.”

At the heart of the strategy, set out in a five-year plan being published today, are a points system to prove that immigrants would benefit the economy and fingerprinting for two million people with visas to stop them destroying documents and disappearing into the black economy.

The decision to embrace a points system puts Labour policy close to that of the Tories, the chief difference being that they want an annual cap on numbers, including refugees, while Labour proposes limits based only on economic need.

The key to the proposals, is tough new controls on “chain migration” when immigrants who enter legally are followed by their extended family.

Mr Clarke rejected suggestions that the two main parties were “bolstering bigotry” by devoting so much attention to immigration and asylum.

“I think that the issue of who does come into this country, and whether they are entitled to be in this country, is a perfectly legitimate aspect of public debate,” he said.

He told Breakfast with Frost on BBC One: “We think it’s perfectly reasonable if people are coming here to work, they should bring their spouse, their husband or wife, and any immediate children. But going wider than that, it seems to me, is unnecessary.”

A points system, modelled on that used in Australia but without its accompanying overall quota, will test how well people speak and write English, their vocational skills or professional qualifications and experience.

This will be coupled with curbs on the right to settle permanently and the scrapping of the indefinite entitlement to remain after four years.

Residency will be restricted to skilled people who can support themselves. There will be powers to impose restrictions on economic migrants from specific countries if numbers of applicants rise suddenly. Measures will target organised gangs involved in people-smuggling.

No limits will be set on the number of people granted asylum but there will be a pledge to increase the numbers refused refugee status so that the number of failed asylum-seekers in Britain falls each month.

Mark Oaten, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, questioned the Government’s competence in managing the asylum system. “Whilst it is good that Labour has rejected the Tory idea of quotas, the jury is still out on the Home Office’s ability to deliver a fair and efficient system,” he said.

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