Labour sent out ‘search parties’ for immigrants to get them to come to the UK, Lord Mandelson has admitted.

In a stunning confirmation that the Blair and Brown governments deliberately engineered mass immigration, the former Cabinet Minister and spin doctor said New Labour sought out foreign workers.

He also conceded that the influx of arrivals meant the party’s traditional supporters are now unable to find work.

By contrast, Labour leader Ed Miliband has said his party got it wrong on immigration but has refused to admit it was too high under Labour.

Between 1997 and 2010, net migration to Britain totalled more than 2.2million, more than twice the population of Birmingham.

The annual net figure quadrupled under Labour from 48,000 people in 1997 to 198,000 by 2009.

Lord Mandelson’s remarks come three years after Labour officials denied claims by former adviser Andrew Neather that they deliberately encouraged immigration in order to change the make-up of Britain.

Mr Neather said the policy was designed to ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity’.

He said there was ‘a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural’.

Senior Labour figures have been reluctant to concede they deliberately engineered the influx of migrants who have transformed communities over the past decade.

But, at a rally for the Blairite think-tank Progress, Lord Mandelson said: ‘In 2004 when as a Labour government, we were not only welcoming people to come into this country to work, we were sending out search parties for people and encouraging them, in most cases, to take up work in this country.’