Net migration to UK halves under tougher rules on work and study

Biggest fall in net migration since Covid after stricter visa rules introduced

Net migration to the UK has dropped after tougher border controls were introduced. Getty Images

Net migration to Britain halved in 2024, official data showed on Thursday, driven by fewer people coming to work and study in the UK.

Conservative politicians attributed the drop in numbers to the reforms they introduced on visa rules and the rights of migrants to bring their families into the country, while Labour sought to clamp down on the exploitation of care workers after coming to power last summer.

The figure stood at an estimated 431,000 in the year ending December 2024, down 49.9 per cent from 860,000 a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics said. Net migration – an estimate of the number of people migrating to Britain minus those – reached a record high of 906,000 in the year to June 2023.

This is the biggest calendar-year drop since the early stages of the pandemic and the largest numerical drop for any 12-month period.

Long-term immigration fell below one million for the first time in around three years under the impact of visa rule changes intended to cut the number of arrivals.

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.

The data will offer some relief to Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who earlier this month promised to reduce migration significantly over the next four years. He is under pressure from Nigel Farage's right-wing, anti-immigration Reform UK party. In August, weeks after the Labour government took office, the country was convulsed by anti-immigration riots in which mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers were attacked.

This month, Mr Starmer said the country risks becoming an “island of strangers” without better integration, and said he wanted net migration to have fallen “significantly” by the next general election, but without giving a specific target.

His plan includes reforming work and study visas and requiring a higher level of English across all immigration routes. Experts think that could reduce the number by a further 100,000 a year.

In 2023, the Conservative government raised the minimum salary threshold for foreign skilled workers and made it harder for workers and students to bring their families with them.

Thursday’s number showed an 81 per cent drop in the number of dependents brought to the UK by students, and a 35 per cent drop in the number brought by workers.

The ONS noted that international students who came to Britain in large numbers when Covid-19 travel restrictions were lifted were now leaving the country as their visas had expired.

It said the change was driven by lower immigration from countries outside the EU, which in recent years has included high numbers of people from India, Nigeria and Pakistan.

A rise in the number of people leaving the country also helped to lower the net migration figure, as 517,000 emigrated, up 11 per cent on a year earlier. Mary Gregory, director of population statistics at the ONS, said this trend was driven by people who had originally come on study visas when pandemic travel restrictions were eased.

The figures released on Thursday do not include those arriving in the UK by unauthorised means to seek asylum, many in flimsy, small boats across the English Channel. Although that number is far lower – some 37,000 people crossed the English Channel on small boats last year – it has amplified the debate.

Small boats and outboard motors used by migrants crossing the Channel from France at a warehouse facility in Dover, Kent. PA

Marley Morris, associate director for migration, trade and communities at the Institute for Public Policy and Research think tank, warned the government needed to be careful to “balance managing overall levels of migration with its ambitions to grow the economy and repair public services”.

Economists at Pantheon Macroeconomcs said Mr Starmer’s new immigration controls, forecast by the government to reduce net migration by a further 98,000 each year, would slice 0.1 per cent off the UK’s potential growth.

“With the fall in numbers in part driven by a sharp drop in social care visas, it will have to be particularly cautious that further restrictions to this route do not exacerbate the current workforce crisis in the care sector,” Mr Morris said.

But Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said the economic impact of this decline would be “relatively small”.

“That’s because the groups that have driven the decline, such as study and work dependants, are neither the highest skilled, highest paid migrants who make substantial contributions to tax revenue, nor the most disadvantaged groups that require substantial support,” she said.