UK Net Migration Falls To Half In 2024, Compared To Previous Year

The UK’s web migration figures have seen a big decline, dropping to 431,000, practically half of the 860,000 recorded within the yr to December 2024. This sharp lower is attributed to lowered immigration from non-EU international locations for work and research visas, in addition to a rise in emigration from the UK. 

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), numerous worldwide college students who initially got here to the UK earlier than the Covid-19 journey restrictions had been eased have additionally left the nation.

The decline in web migration has been welcomed by the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, who said that “the 300,000 drop in web migration because the election is vital and welcome after the figures quadrupled to just about one million within the final parliament.” 

However, the previous Conservative Home Secretary James Cleverly claimed that the drop is as a result of visa rule modifications he carried out, saying “this drop is due to the visa rule modifications that I put in place.”

The restrictions launched by the Conservative authorities, together with a ban on overseas college students and care employees bringing dependants with them to the UK, a doubling of the minimal wage threshold wanted for work visas to £38,700, and a rise within the minimal earnings required for British residents to deliver members of the family to hitch them to £29,000, have contributed to the decline. 

Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory on the University of Oxford, famous that the report fall in web migration was made doable by unusually excessive migration after Brexit.

“The record-breaking decline in web migration was doable primarily as a result of numbers had beforehand been so excessive,” Sumption mentioned. “UK migration patterns in 2023 had been very uncommon, with unexpectedly giant numbers of visas for care employees, worldwide college students, and their members of the family. This made it simpler for the federal government at the moment to deliver down the numbers.” Sumption additionally predicted that the financial affect of the decline can be negligible, stating that “the financial affect of this decline is definitely prone to be comparatively small.”

The difficulty of web migration has turn out to be an vital electoral battleground, with considerations amongst voters concerning the NHS, housing, and the small boats disaster within the Channel. Labour has hardened its place on immigration, with Keir Starmer pledging to cut back web migration earlier than the following election. However, Starmer’s feedback concerning the UK risking changing into an “island of strangers” with out powerful new insurance policies have been criticised by some politicians, who drew comparisons to Enoch Powell’s infamous “rivers of blood” speech.