Lord Paul, a member of the Lords Economic Affairs Committee, said he had strong reservations about the Committee's recommendation that immigration should be measured by the impact on income per head of resident population. He said other peers had doubts about the proposal but had not been in a majority. "The report does really concentrate on the benefits of immigration per capita, which I don't really agree with myself. "We have a strong economy, we want a competitive economy and one of the things is that jobs will go to the immigrants. So what, as long as the country is happy with low inflation and a strong economy," he said in London.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, during his monthly press conference yesterday, said that the concerns raised were already being tackled by a new points-based system that would allow only highly skilled workers into Britain.

He said that immigration had added six billion pounds to the economy, a substantial boost, noting that most British businesses that have faced labour shortage had benefited from being able to recruit more widely from skilled labour.

Lord Paul, British Ambassador for Overseas Business, further commented, "I think a lot of them had anxiety that per capita was not the best measure but the evidence was not coming to back us."

Lord Paul, Chairman and founder of the multi-billion

pounds Caparo Group, said: "We have a strong economy, we have low inflation and that is because we are getting younger