The government believes that Britain can benefit from migration, but not uncontrolled migration. It wants to continue to attract the brightest and the best people to the UK, but with control on the numbers coming here. Unlimited migration places unacceptable pressure on public services, school places, and the provision of housing, causing problems for certain local communities.

The purpose of this consultation was to seek views on how a limit on immigration should work. It included questions about the coverage of limits, as well as the mechanics of how they would work in practice. The consultation also recognised the need to attract more high-net-worth migrants to the UK through the routes for investors and entrepreneurs, and asked for views on how that could be achieved.

The consultation set out the key choices shaped by those considerations, and sought the views of business and other interested parties.

Following the consultation, permanent limits on non-EU economic migration routes have been decided and will be put in place in April 2011.

The independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), which advises the government on migration issues, carried out a separate consultation on the levels at which the immigration limit should be set in its first full year. You can find out more about that consultation, which ran until 7 September 2010, in the MAC section.