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The Office for National Statistics said on Thursday that UK net migration fell by 20 per cent in the year to June to 728,000. At first glance, a success (if the goal is to bring down the number of arrivals).
But look again: that’s only because the ONS significantly revised its total for the year to June 2023, with net migration now at 906,000 over that year instead of the previous estimate of 740,000.
“Revisions are always likely, but usually they aren’t so substantial,” says Ben Brindle of the Migration Observatory.
Why? Brindle says the ONS initially missed around 41,000 people who arrived from Ukraine, and there was a change in how non-EU migration is measured.
The fall in net migration figures for the year to June 2024 is due to fewer dependents arriving via the student visa scheme, while the higher numbers of international students who arrived post-Covid are now finishing their courses.
The ONS says one of the main changes in measurement is the ability to track when people switch from one type of visa to another. This keeps them in the immigration count as soon as the new visa is granted, while previously they might have been missed until they travelled.
“Now we’ve made those improvements, the statistics should stabilise in the future,” an ONS spokesperson said. They added that more detail on the nationality and age of migrants will allow more accurate estimates on who is likely to stay long-term (for 12 months or more).
The previous Conservative government brought in policies banning most international students and health and social care workers from bringing their relatives to the UK, as well as raising the salary threshold required to sponsor a foreign spouse coming to Britain.
Brindle said the currency crisis in Nigeria and the related high costs of studying in the UK also contributed to the fall in international students. For care workers, he said the main reason for the drop was because the Home Office is scrutinising applications from care providers more carefully after widespread reports of exploitation in the sector.
A Labour party spokesperson said: “In their own words, the Tories broke the immigration system. On their watch, net migration quadrupled in four years to a record high of nearly one million, despite saying they would lower it to 100,000.”
New Home Office data also shows a fall in the number of asylum visa applications submitted and granted. Government spending on asylum in the UK reached £5.38 billion in the year to April 2024 – up 36 per cent from £3.95 billion from the previous year.
