Britons using cash-only nail bars, barbers or car washes are ‘feeding the problem’ of illegal migration and could be creating more victims of slavery, a top Home Office official has warned.

Bas Javid, the director general of immigration enforcement, said that working in the UK’s black economy is a ‘pull factor’ for those coming to the country illegally.

This includes those who make perilous journeys in small boats across the Channel after people-smuggling gangs sell Britain as ‘the land of milk and honey’.

Mr Javid, a former top police officer and the brother of Tory ex-home secretary Sajid Javid, told the Sunday Times: ‘People should recognise they are contributing to it and if they are, they are feeding the problem.

‘Part of our job… has to be to educate the wider public that if you do use illegal car washes or go to illegal nail bars then you are feeding the problem, and at the end of that there are victims.’

Although he said there were legitimate reasons for some businesses to only accept cash, Mr Javid urged customers to ‘look at the conditions and the way that people operate’.

‘I think we’ve got to strike the balance of making sure that people are cognisant and aware that this environment of illegal working activity and exploitation exists,’ he added.

New figures from the Office for National Statistics showed net migration – the difference between the number of people arriving and leaving the country – hit a record 906,000 in 2023.

Mr Javid told the newspaper there was no exact figure for the number of illegal migrants in the UK, but said the majority – about two-thirds – arrived through legal routes rather than on small boats.

More than 33,000 illegal migrants have crossed the Channel this year – including more than 20,000 since Sir Keir Starmer has been Prime Minister and already above the 29,437 total for 2023.

‘A lot of people who come into the UK who end up being here illegally, the large majority arrive through legal routes,’ he said.

‘A good portion of those people arrive entirely legally and then during their time here, for one reason or another – that could because they turn to criminality, or it could be they just overstay their visa – they become illegal.’

Mr Javid said this includes people who apply for student visas for top universities and deliberately overstay.

Following the release of the ONS migration figures on Thursday, Sir Keir Starmer used a Downing Street press conference to claim the previous Tory government had overseen a ‘one-nation experiment in open borders’.

The Prime Minister promised to set out plans to reduce immigration and reform the UK’s post-Brexit points-based system.

A senior Cabinet minister this morning confirmed that the Government’s new ‘Plan for Change’ – to be announced this week – would mention both legal and illegal migration.

But Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said a ‘numerical target’ for migration numbers would not be part of the announcement.

Sir Keir will use a major speech to set out milestones in key policy areas, to try and achieve the missions laid out in Labour’s general election manifesto. 

Mr McFadden was asked by the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme whether the announcement would include a target on reducing net migration.

‘Targets for net migration haven’t worked very well,’ he said. ‘What’s happened is it’s gone up an awful lot in recent years. We do want to bring it down.

‘The exact number that you need will always ebb and flow depending on the needs of the economy.’

He added: ‘We’re not going to have a numerical target for net migration.

‘But we are going to make sure that we do more to train our own workforce and do more to get long term sick people off benefits and into work.’