Immigration was tumbling from record highs before Labour took power, it was revealed today.
Official figures showed net long-term inflows were 431,000 in the year to December, compared with 860,000 across 2023.
It had dropped to 739,000 in the year to last June – just before the election – with the peak remaining 906,000 in the 12 months to June 2023.
The numbers from the ONS suggest the curbs introduced by the Tories were already having an impact – although the level was still roughly equivalent to the population of Leeds.
Keir Starmer unveiled a crackdown on legal immigration last week, warning that failure to control the system risked turning Britain into an ‘island of strangers’.
Downing Street was forced to deny angry comparisons from MPs that it was an echo of Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech.
Director of population statistics at the ONS Mary Gregory said: ‘Our provisional estimates show net migration has almost halved compared with the previous year, driven by falling numbers of people coming to work and study, particularly student dependants. This follows policy changes brought in restricting visa applications.
‘There has also been an increase in emigration over the 12 months to December 2024, especially people leaving who originally came on study visas once pandemic travel restrictions to the UK were eased.’
Keir Starmer unveiled a crackdown on legal immigration last week, warning that failure to control the system risked turning Britain into an ‘island of strangers’
It was the biggest calendar-year drop since the early stages of the pandemic when net migration fell from 184,000 in the year ending December 2019 to 93,000 in the year ending December 2020.
The numerical drop was the largest for any 12-month period, with the ONS pointing to falling numbers of people coming to work and study in the UK.
Long-term immigration fell below one million for the first time in around three years.
That was estimated to be 948,000 in the year ending December 2024, down by almost a third from 1,326,000 in the previous 12 months and below a million for the first time since the 12 months to March 2022.
Emigration rose by around 11 per cent to an estimated 517,000 for the year to December, up from 466,000 in the previous year.
People leaving the UK has returned to a similar level to the year ending June 2017.
There was a 49 per cent decrease in 2024 in the number of non-EU+ nationals arriving in the UK as the main applicant on a work visa, along with a 35 per cent fall in those coming as work dependants.
The number of non-EU+ nationals arriving as main applicants on a study visa dropped by 17 per cent, while there was a much larger fall of 86% in study dependants.
The drop is likely to reflect changes in migration rules introduced in early 2024 by the previous Conservative government, which included restricting the ability of most international students to bring family members.
Non-EU+ nationals refers to people who are not from the European Union or from Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.
The White Paper published last week pledged to toughen skills thresholds for visas, close the care work route, demand more fluent English, and make people wait a decade for full citizenship.
However, Sir Keir has flatly refused to set any hard cap or targets, instead merely stating there will be a ‘significant’ in numbers fall by the next election.
The chair of the Migration Advisory Committee has estimated that the package means net long-term immigration will reduce from over 700,000 annually to ‘under 300,000 and probably closer to 250,000’.
It was already projected to drop to around 340,000 in the coming years.
The PM’s commitment to bring down numbers could also be affected by the youth ‘free movement’ scheme he agreed in principle with the EU this week.
Although the shape of the arrangement is yet to be thrashed out, Brussels officials are said to be pushing for hundreds of thousands of young people to be given the right to live and work in the UK for years.
