LONDON, Oct 18: Britain will impose tougher restrictions on immigration as the global financial crisis lifts unemployment to the highest rate in nearly a decade, the country’s new immigration minister said on Saturday.

“If people are being made unemployed, the question of immigration becomes extremely thorny,” Phil Woolas told The Times newspaper. “It’s been too easy to get into this country in the past and it’s going to get harder,” he said in an interview.

In a dramatic change of policy, the Labour government intends placing a limit on immigration. “There has to be a balance between the number of people coming in and the number of people leaving,” said Woolas.

Britain’s unemployment rate jumped to an eight-year high of 5.7 per cent in the three months to August, official data showed. Under the International Labour Organisation measure of unemployment, the rate had stood at 5.2 per cent for the three months to May. The 5.7-pc unemployment rate was the highest since the three months to March, 2000.—AFP