Expressing strong reservations about a Parliamentary committee's recommendation for an annual cap on immigration, leading NRI industrialist Lord Swraj Paul said on Wednesday that immigrants have made a significant contribution to the British economy.

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 told PTI.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, during his monthly press conference on Tuesday, 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, said that other peers on the committee doubted that the benefits of immigration should be measured by income per head of population.

"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 workers who are filling shortages.

"My company, is short of people, skilled people. If we did not have the choice of migrants we would be closing factories and going overseas for production."