MERSEY MP Frank Field will today launch an audacious attempt to slash immigration by joining forces with a leading Conservative.

The Birkenhead MP is forming Parliament’s first cross-party group on immigration in partnership with Nicholas Soames, the colourful former Tory minister.

The group – which will also boast a former trade union leader, church leader and Army chief – wants the level of immigration cut to match the number of people leaving the country.

That would require a big cut in the numbers moving to Britain. Last year, 605,000 did so, while just 406,000 left – a difference of almost 200,000.

The group hopes its call for “Balanced Migration” will be listened to by all party leaders.

Mr Field has long warned that voters are turning to the BNP because of anger about “uncontrolled immigration”.

Ahead of today’s launch of the group, he said it would allow “the voice of working-class people” to at last be heard in the public debate about the controversial subject.

The initiative also finds the former Labour minister again working closely with the Conservatives, a year after he broke ranks to advise Tory leader David Cameron’s policy reviews.

Mr Field said: “One group that has disproportionately borne the cost of immigration, through pressure on wages, longer waiting lists for decent housing and increased demand for public services, has been lower-paid black and white Britons.

“This group of our population has also often experienced a transformation of their neighbourhoods from settled working-class communities to societies which they can barely recognise.”

Mr Soames added: “Balanced Migration would not prevent people from coming to work in the UK for a few years, but it would control the number of people allowed to settle permanently.”

The pair said it was the first time in British political history that MPs from the two main political parties had “come together to tackle this immensely sensitive and difficult issue”.

They highlighted how the Government expected immigration to add 7m to the UK’s population by 2031.

“Balanced Migration” would limit the growth in non-EU citizens, who would be able to work for up to four years and then be expected to leave.

Other members of the group include Lord (Bill) Jordan (former president of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union), Lord Carey (former Archbishop of Canterbury) and Field Marshal Lord Inge.