Britain's Indian-origin Home Secretary Suella Braverman issued a warning against "unsustainable" mass and rapid migration into the country and called for action to cut growing migrant numbers.
In a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in London, which was interrupted twice by protesters who shouted about migration, the 43-year-old London-born Tory MP called on her governing Conservative Party to renew its commitment to bring down immigration.
"It's not xenophobic to say that mass and rapid migration is unsustainable in terms of housing supply, public services and community relations," said Braverman.
"While illegal migration is rightly our priority given the acute challenges we face in the [English] Channel, we must not lose sight of the importance of controlling legal migration too," she said.
The Brexit-backing Cabinet minister said it was time for the UK to train more workers within the country to reduce reliance on foreign workers.
Braverman also stated that she had "voted and campaigned for" Brexit because she wanted Britain to control migration and have a say on what works for the country. She stressed the importance of controlling migration and developing a system to attract skilled workers.
"High-skilled workers support economic growth. And where the labour market has acute or structural shortages, as with the NHS, it is of course right that we should have an immigration system agile enough to plug those shortages. But we need to get overall immigration numbers down," she said.
The speech is being seen as piling pressure on British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to focus on cutting soaring net migration numbers.
Sunak's 'Stop the Boats' pledge to curb illegal migration is among the key priorities for his premiership ahead of an expected general election in the second half of next year.
