MIGRATION NATION
Tories fail to deliver on pledge
NET immigration hit a record 745,000 last year – more than three times the Tories’ manifesto promise.
The Office for National Statistics yesterday revised its estimate for the year to December 2022 up from 606,000.
The Tories pledged to get net migration below 100,000 in their 2010, 2015 and 2017 manifestos.
Though they abandoned the vow in the 2019 election, they did commit to making sure “overall numbers come down” – and at the time net migration stood at 226,000. Also in figures out yesterday, the ONS estimates 1.18 million moved to the UK in the year to June 2023.
It put the number leaving at 508,000, a net gain of 672,000.
People coming to study was the largest driver of immigration from outside the EU at 39%, followed by work at 33%.
The war in Ukraine and arrivals of Afghans and Hong Kongers also partly fuelled the rise but the number fell from 19% in 2021 to 9% last year.
Most arriving in the UK were non-EU nationals (968,000), followed by EU (129,000) and British (84,000). In the year to September 2023, there were 45,081 irregular arrivals, down 16% . Four-fifths had crossed the Channel in small boats.
The right-wing New Conservatives group, led by MPs Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger, urged the PM to publish a plan to cut numbers, saying: “This is ‘do or die’ for our party. Each of us made a promise to the electorate.”
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the figures expose the “scale of utter Tory failure”. She said: “These figures are driven by a 54% increase in work visas and a 156% increase in health and social care visas which prove their abysmal record on skills, training and workforce planning.”
Home Secretary James Cleverly said: “The Government remains committed to reducing levels of legal migration while at the same time focusing on our priority of stopping the boats.”