Keir Starmer admitted he must bring down immigration today after shock figures showed the annual record has been smashed again.
The PM insisted Britain can no longer be a ‘soft touch’ after huge revisions to official data showed net inflows were 906,000 in the year to June 2023.
Arrivals in the 12 months to June this year were 728,000 higher than those leaving the country. In itself that was almost as much as the previous long-term immigration record.
But the bar has been dramatically shifted upwards by the Office for National Statistics, with net migration for the year to June 2023 now thought to have been 166,000 above the initial estimate of 740,000.
A similar revision has been made for net migration in the year to December 2023, which was initially believed to be 685,000 and is now put at 866,000, an increase of 181,000.
At a hastily-arranged press conference in No10, Sir Keir accused the Tories of using Brexit to pursue an ‘open borders experiment’ saying they had failed ‘time and again’ to get the system under control.
He said he had done a ‘double take’ on seeing the numbers, branding them ‘far too high’ and must reduce ‘significantly’. ‘We will get them down,’ he said. ‘It is off the scale what has happened in four short years.
‘It is our job to turn it around and we will.’
However, Sir Keir refused to set any target – saying that had been proved not to succeed with the Conservatives having repeatedly committed to ‘tens of thousands’.
The ONS attributed the radical shift to more complete data and improvements in how it estimates the behaviour of people arriving in the UK from outside the EU.
However, the latest revisions will fuel criticism of the stats body – which is already under intense fire for faulty jobs market numbers.
The scale of the inflows – with the peak roughly equivalent to adding two cities the same size as Leicester in a year – immediately sparked a fresh political row. Numbers from outside the EU have exploded since 2021, after the Brexit deal took effect.
The five biggest sources of immigration have been India, Nigeria, Pakistan, China and Zimbabwe. In the year to June 2023, 268,000 arrivals came from India alone.
Kemi Badenoch used a major speech last night to insist the Tories would not allow Britain to be treated like a ‘hotel’ for migrants.
But Labour claimed it is ‘clearing up the mess’ left by the former government.
In other developments today:
Of the 1.2million people who came to live in the UK in the 12 months to June this year, around 86 per cent – a million – from outside the EU.
Indian was the most common nationality in that group for for both work-related – 116,000 – and study-related – 127,000 – reasons.
Some 845,000 were of working age and 179,000 were children.
The ONS revised long-term immigration up by 82,000 in the year to June 2023, while emigration was shifted down by 84,000 – giving an overall net increase to the headline figure of 166,000. In that period 1.3million arrived and 414,000 left.
The net migration total for 2023 as a whole was increased by 181,000.
The ONS said it now thought 43,000 more Ukrainians had come to the UK in the year to June 2023, and 30,000 more in the year to December.
The body is also estimating that fewer EU nationals departed the country, and more students from outside the EU stay after finishing courses.
The ONS said that while remaining high by ‘historic standards’, net migration is now ‘beginning to fall’.
Director Mary Gregory said: ‘Since 2021, long-term international migration to the UK has been at unprecedented levels. This has been driven by a variety of factors, including the war in Ukraine and the effects of the post-Brexit immigration system. Pent-up demand for study-related immigration because of travel restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic also had an impact.
‘While remaining high by historic standards, net migration is now beginning to fall and is provisionally down 20 per cent in the 12 months to June 2024.
‘Over that period we have seen a fall in immigration, driven by declining numbers of dependants on study visas coming from outside the EU.
‘Over the first six months of 2024, we are also seeing decreases in the number of people arriving for work-related reasons. This is partly related to policy changes earlier this year and is consistent with visa data published by Home Office.
‘We are also starting to see increases in emigration, most notably for those who came to the UK on study-related visas. This is likely to be a consequence of the higher numbers of students coming to the UK post pandemic who are now reaching the end of their courses.’
Sir Keir said the Tories were guilty of a ‘different order of failure’ that happened ‘by design not accident’.
‘Time and again the Conservative Party promised they would get the numbers down. Time and again they failed, and now the chorus of excuses has begun.’
He added: ‘A failure on this scale isn’t just bad luck, it isn’t a global trend or taking your eye off the ball, no this is a different order of failure.
‘This happened by design not accident.
‘Policies were reformed deliberately to liberalise immigration, Brexit was used for that purpose to turn Britain into a one nation experiment in open borders.’
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: ‘In the space of four years net migration rose by almost five times to a record high – that shows the serious damage that was done to the immigration system, the lack of proper controls in place, and the over reliance on a big increase in overseas recruitment.
‘Net migration is still four times higher than it was at the beginning of the last Parliament and we are clear that it needs to come down. That is why we are continuing with visa controls and setting out new plans to link them to the system for training and skills here in the UK to tackle the big increase in overseas recruitment over the last few years.
Migration Watch Chairman Alp Mehmet said net migration is ‘still far too high and unsustainable’.
‘Moreover, the modest fall has little to do with anything that Sir Keir Starmer and his Home Secretary have done.
‘It is now essential that net migration is quickly reduced as close as possible to zero, if we are to avoid further tensions in the housing sector, the NHS and other services already in crisis.
‘Meanwhile, the changing nature of society that inevitably follows rapid mass immigration will put the cohesion we have long enjoyed at ever greater risk.’
The revisions come as the ONS has continued to review its net migration figures as more complete data becomes available and has improved how it estimates the migration behaviour of people arriving in the UK from outside the European Union.
Ms Badenoch warned yesterday that immigration levels are ‘a world away from where we need to be’.
She promised a ‘strict numerical cap’ on arrivals, with only those able to make a ‘substantial and clear contribution’ to Britain allowed in.
She will review Britain’s membership of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the continuation of Labour’s Human Rights Act, which have both been blamed for blocking past attempts to get tough.
The Tory leader said there would be ‘zero tolerance for foreign criminals remaining in the UK’.
Tory ministers originally predicted their changes would cut numbers by 300,000, but the full effect will not be seen until next year’s figures.
The Treasury’s OBR watchdog has forecast that net annual migration will subside to 315,000 a year over the ‘medium term’ – although that estimate now looks in serious doubt.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: ‘Today’s figures confirm what we’ve been warning about: immigration remains far too high, and Labour was wrong to suspend further restrictions on family visas.
‘Such high numbers place mounting pressure on housing, public services, and damage social cohesion, causing a real impact felt by communities across the UK.
‘We need immediate action to enforce stricter controls on the border, get these numbers down, and put the needs of British workers and families front and centre.’
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman laid the blame squarely on the ‘policies and decisions taken by the last government’.
‘This Government has been elected on a mandate to change the country and put the people’s priorities at the heart of delivery, and that means bringing down these record high levels of legal migration and tackling the root causes behind it,’ the spokesman said.
The spokesman would not be drawn into saying whether the Government’s approach would be tougher than that of the Tories, but claimed the Conservatives had allowed employers to ‘become hooked on cheap foreign labour’.
He told reporters that ministers had set out a ‘different approach, one that links migration skills and labour market policy so that overseas recruitment does not remain the default for filling shortages here at home’.
Labour claimed the Tories had ‘broken the immigration system’. ‘On their watch, net migration quadrupled in four years to a record high of nearly one million, despite saying they’d lower it to 100,000. They are an open borders party who lied time and again to the public. This is the chaos Labour inherited and any crowing from the Tories should be seen in that light,’ a spokesman said.
‘Over the summer, the Government started the hard graft. We hired more caseworkers to tackle the asylum backlog and we’re now interviewing 10,000 people per month, compared to 2,000 under the Tories, so we can get people out of asylum hotels and save the taxpayers billions.
‘We’ve also ramped up the removal of those with no right to be in the UK by a fifth. Without this action, thousands more would remain in the UK illegally.’
Nigel Farage called the migration statistics ‘horrendous’.
The Reform UK leader said: ‘Horrendous if you want to get a GP appointment, horrendous if you want to travel around Britain’s motorways, horrendous if you want your kids or grandkids to ever get a foot onto the housing ladder.
‘Horrendous in terms of producing very disjointed societies and communities.’
He added: ‘And you might have noticed, the quicker the population rises, the poorer the average family in Britain becomes.’
CPS think-tank Research Director Karl Williams said: ‘Today’s net migration figures from the ONS are astonishing. Not only is the figure of 728,000 for 2023-4 far higher than expected, but numbers for 2022-3 have been revised upwards by 166,000 to a new record of 906,000. The scale of this adjustment raises a serious question mark over the quality of our migration data, which drives crucial policy decisions.
‘More broadly, net migration in the last four years now stands at over 2.5 million, which represents population growth of 3.8 per cent – equivalent to the combined populations of Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Manchester and Bristol.’
Touring broadcast studios this morning, Home Office minister Seema Malhotra declined to say what level of net migration would be acceptable.
Ms Malhotra repeatedly dodged, insisting policy must be based on ‘a credible and serious plan’ and the Government should not ‘just pull figures out of the air’.
She told BBC Breakfast: ‘My point is this, we want to see net migration coming down, but we have to do so in a way that is tackling the causes of net migration, because if much of net migration has been driven by recruiting workers from overseas, you also have to look at what the impact on the economy would be.’
The OBR assessment published last month pointed to Home Office visa data covering the second quarter of 2024 showing a ‘sharp’ fall.
‘This largely reflects government restrictions coming into force in the first half of this year, which we now expect to have a slightly larger impact than we anticipated in March,’ the report released alongside the Budget said.
‘We judge the stronger outturn and larger policy impact to be broadly offsetting, and therefore project net migration will continue to fall in line with our March forecast.’