Free movement within EU should only be for people with jobs, says Home Secretary

People should only be allowed to move freely within the EU if they have a job waiting for them, the Home Secretary has said.

Theresa May has called for the reinstatement of the original free movement principles, meaning "the freedom to move for a job".

Writing in The Sunday Times (£), she also said the right to study in the UK should not give people the right to remain in the country unconditionally.

Mrs May said the events of this summer, when hundreds of people have died trying to reach Europe, are the consequences of a "broken migration system" and were a "wake-up call" for the EU.

Her comments come at the end of a week when it was revealed that net migration to Britain was at its highest level on record and three times the government target, something Mrs May said was "simply unsustainable".

She wrote in the paper: "Reducing net EU migration need not mean undermining the principle of free movement.

"When it was first enshrined, free movement meant the freedom to move to a job, not the freedom to cross borders to look for work or claim benefits.

"If we want to control migration - and bring it down to the tens of thousands - we must take some big decisions, face down powerful interests and reinstate the original principle underlying free movement within the EU."

Hundreds of thousands of migrants have tried to reach the EU this year, many by crossing the Mediterranean, according to the UN.

Mrs May said there was "no limit" to the number of students who could stay in the UK if they got a graduate-level job after their studies, but added that the Government must "break the link between short-term study and permanent settlement".