The release of official statistics is often the focus of political scrutiny, but the latest annual figures for overall net migration to the UK, due Thursday at 9.30am, are sufficiently anticipated they have prompted two separate policy announcements already.
On Tuesday, Suella Braverman rushed through a plan to reduce the number of people arriving via student visas by greatly limiting the scope for them to bring along family members.
A day later, Keir Starmer used every one of his prime minister’s questions allocation to lambast Rishi Sunak over the likely size of the statistics, and to present Labour ideas he argued would incentivise employers to train UK staff rather than bring workers in from overseas.
Immigration has long been a highly charged debate in UK politics, but with the end of free movement after Brexit, the Conservatives’ hope was that the argument on formal migration would be largely settled, with debate focusing on people arriving via unofficial routes such as small boats.
Instead, the near-46,000 arrivals who crossed the Channel this way will be only a small fraction of the total for net migration, which some have forecast could get into the high hundreds of thousands.
The last available figures showed the number stood at 504,000 in the year to June 2022, compared with 173,000 in the 12 months to June 2021. Those released on Thursday will be for the calendar year 2022, and are likely to be higher still.
What is going on? The short answer is this is the result of unexpected one-off factors and long-term choices.
In the first column comes one obvious bulge: the arrival of refugees from Ukraine and from Hong Kong. Similarly, the impact of Covid has skewed figures, with more shorter-term arrivals such as students coming after the pandemic, given very few arrived during 2020 and 2021.
But more significant is the effect of government policy, not least the fact it became easier for many non-EU nationals to come to the UK to work after Brexit, with restrictions on skills and minimum salaries lowered.
In the longer term, there has been an official willingness to rely on overseas staff to fill gaps in industries facing shortages, notably health and social care, rather than tackle wage and working condition issues that might make the roles more appealing to British staff.
And, at least until this week, there has been a tolerance for universities targeting new overseas markets for students, who pay high fees but, when studying for masters or doctorate qualifications, can be in their 30s with dependants.
As with all migration debates, officials describe it as a generally polite battle of wills between departments eager to fight their corner over the economic boosts from migration, particularly education, agriculture and the Treasury, and a Home Office led by Braverman, who has publicly called for significant cuts in the numbers coming.
Whatever Thursday’s final figure was, said Rob McNeil, deputy director of Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, it would be “in part because of geo-political events, things like the invasion of Ukraine, the crackdown in Hong Kong and Covid, but there are also lots of policy choices involved”.
He added: “All this doesn’t mean we are necessarily at the spike of the peak yet. That’s not to say that we aren’t, it’s just that we can’t predict it. In the longer term, you might expect the figures to broadly return to the pre-Covid norms, but we can’t say that with any certainty.”
