Migration hits 280,000 a year – despite drop in EU arrivals

NET immigration into Britain rose to almost 300,000 last year – despite the number of EU arrivals dropping sharply.

Official figures show that 282,000 more people came into the country than left in 2017 – 33,000 up on the previous year.

The increase was fuelled by a surge from Asia. In total, net immigration from countries outside the EU was 227,000 in 2017 – the highest since September 2011. Meanwhile, net immigration from the EU fell to the lowest since 2013 – but still added 101,000 to the population last year.

And 46,000 more British citizens left the country than came back in 2017 making for an overall net immigration figure of 282,000 for the year.

The figures led to fresh debate over the Government’s target to reduce net immigration to the ‘tens of thousands’. ‘These are very disappointing figures,’ said Lord Green of Deddington, who is chairman of the campaign group Migration Watch UK.

‘It’s time for the Government to get serious about reducing immigration instead of caving into every demand of the immigration lobby.’

Although net migration has fallen from record highs in 2015 and 2016, it is nearly triple the Government’s target of under 100,000 and equivalent to adding a town the size of Stoke to the population every year.

The figures, from the Office for National Statistics, come from the first full calendar year since the Brexit vote.

The number of EU citizens arriving fell by 9,000 to 240,000, while the number leaving rose by 23,000 to 139,000. Overall, net immigration from the EU was

‘Time to get serious’

101,000. The figures also showed that net immigration from eight eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004 – Poland, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia and Latvia – has fallen from 42,000 in the year prior to the referendum to 6,000 in 2017.

Net migration from 14 longerterm member states has almost halved since the vote, falling from 84,000 to 46,000 last year.

An estimated 40,000 more Romanians and Bulgarians migrated to the UK than left last year, although that was the joint lowest net migration figure for the two countries since the year to September 2014.

Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said the data suggested the UK was ‘still an attractive country, but its allure for EU migrants had declined considerably’.

The Prime Minister’s spokesman said: ‘We remain committed to bringing net migration down to sustainable levels, and that is the tens of thousands.’

But Jonathan Thomas, of the Social Market Foundation think-tank, said: ‘Missing the flawed net migration target yet again merely serves to reinforce why that target is a nonsense.’

Immigration minister Caroline Nokes said more migrants were coming for the right reasons – ‘a definite job or to study’.