A Europhile peer has provoked outrage after he claimed Britain needs intelligent migrants to come to the UK because "native" Britons are "so bloody stupid".
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard is the peer responsible for writing Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon, which gives any EU member the right to quit unilaterally.
The former Secretary General of the European Convention told an event on Thursday that the Leave campaign only won by "cleverly outsourcing xenophobia and racism" to the Ukip leader Nigel Farage.
He also insisted that the arrival of migrants was a "good thing" and kept Britain running.
The cross-bench peer blamed Brexit on David Cameron’s "disastrous" commitment to keep net migration at under 100,000 a year.
Peter Lilley, a Eurosceptic Tory MP, walked out of the talk after claiming Lord Keer showed "contempt for ordinary British people."
Speaking at an event organised by the Institute for Government, Lord Kerr said: "There’s a much deeper argument to have – and that is about whether immigration is good for you or bad for you. In my view, immigration is the thing that keeps this country running.
"We native Brits are so bloody stupid that we need an injection of intelligent people, young people from outside who come in and wake us up from time to time.
"It’s completely true that the Leave campaign, by cleverly outsourcing the xenophobia and the racism to the Farage campaign, were able to salve their consciences it seems by pinning Cameron to the fact that we would only take back control when we left.
"But supposing we did stop all the immigration from the EU, we would not have met Mr Cameron’s target – he would have done a lot of damage to the country if he had met it, but it was in his power to meet it by stopping immigration from outside the EU. So the premise of the argument about immigration was false."
In response Mr Lilley told the Daily Mail he had considered reporting the peer for hate speech, but decided not to because he does not approve of the law prosecuting people for their opinions ,"however odious."
He said: "I think these comments revealed the contempt that some Eurocrats like Lord Kerr have for ordinary British people.
"They think they are there to rule the country and hugely resent any interference by the electorate."
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