Last week, Keir Starmer attacked the Conservatives for deliberately allowing net immigration to rise, despite promising to reduce it. It is an argument which will appeal to socially conservative voters, including many traditional Labour supporters. Starmer’s approach treads a dangerous line between legitimate concerns and outright racism, but he was right. Government action has increased net immigration. But there is good reason, and the picture is much more complicated than most politicians suggest.
What is net migration?
Net migration is the total arriving, minus the number leaving. But both are difficult to measure. The international definition of a migrant is someone “who moves from their country of usual residence for a period of at least 12 months”. Although we count people coming in, we can’t know whether they are really migrants until 12 months later. And numbers leaving are even more difficult to estimate. So published figures on net migration have to be gathered from multiple, different sources, over different timespans. They are always estimates and are regularly updated.
In the year to June 2024 the net figure was 728,000. The Migration Advisory Committee which advises government on migration, estimates that, overall, about 43% are likely to stay in the UK permanently.
Who are these immigrants?
Politicians sometimes imply that small boat crossings are the reason for population growth. But those arrivals form a tiny proportion of the whole, and most people are unaware of the basic facts about immigration.
In fact, the 1.2 million people who entered the UK in the last year divide into four groups, of which work and study visas account for well over 80%. A further 8% are joining families already here, and 7% are accepted on humanitarian grounds (through one of the ‘safe and legal’ routes like the Hong Kong or Ukraine schemes, or as refugees, having had an asylum claim accepted). Only 3% arrive by irregular routes (mainly in ‘small boats’), and at least half of those are judged to be genuine refugees, and are added to the humanitarian numbers when they finally work their way through the immigration system.
Is Britain full?
The political argument has been, for a long time, about absolute numbers. It is true that our population density is among the highest in the world, and that our infrastructure and public services are under great strain. But people make the greatest demands on public resources, especially education, health and pensions, at the beginning and end of life. And most immigrants arrive, having been educated at the expense of some other country, and some decades away from retirement and old age.
If we can keep them healthy, integrated and active, they will be net contributors for several decades. However, they need somewhere to live, and over time, some will add to the pressures on maternity services and education.
Immigrants tend to concentrate in cities, putting disproportionate pressure on public services in some places, and funding for those services often takes some time to catch up with population change.
The age profile of the population is also relevant. Because, increasingly, more people die than are born, we need net immigration of at least 100,000 a year to keep the population stable.
And any attempt to make serious change to numbers must face one or both of two issues – work and higher education.
Migration for work
Work visas account for 43% of all immigrants, and they must have a job offer before they arrive. Two thirds now come to work in health and social care, where an ageing population means rising demand.
For some time the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has been expressing concern about the sector. In their 2023 annual report, they said:
The only long-term sustainable solution to the workforce problems in the sector is to pay all care workers in the UK properly, which would require a significant increase in public funds, and we remain deeply disappointed that the UK government continue to exhibit no ambition in this area.
However, most social care is funded through local authorities, which have seen their funding drastically cut over a decade. Increased pay and better training would increase the pressures on local authority budgets, facing government with a delicate balancing act.
A further concern is that, since Brexit, we are recruiting many health and care workers from countries like Nigeria and Pakistan, which have serious shortages in those occupations. The World Health Organisation’s ‘red list’ of countries which developed countries should avoid recruiting health professionals from includes both.
Migration to study
The higher education system is one of Britain’s most successful export industries. Our Universities have a very high international reputation, recruiting 9% of all international students, second only to the USA.
But they are expensive. Despite high fees, universities ‘lose’ between £1,000 and £4,000 for every British student. So, for a long time, universities have relied on international students to make up the difference. Paying much higher fees, they bring in an average £4,000 a head.
Between 2019 and 2022, the number of international students rose by over 50%, mainly on one year Masters’ courses in subjects like management, computing, and engineering, with higher earning potential. The creation in 2019 of a graduate visa has allowed more of these graduates to stay and contribute to the economy. This means that a growing share of international students are coming partly with the aim of becoming long term work migrants.
The power of government to control these numbers is limited, because a visa is issued automatically to anyone who:
- is offered a place by a university,
- has enough money to support themselves and pay for their course, and
- has a certified level of English.
In 2018, the MAC concluded that international students offered positive economic benefits, including cross subsidising the education of domestic students and research. Around 80% of international students leave after graduation. Counting them as immigrants only if they move onto work-related visas, would reduce net migration figures by 30-40%, but this is technically difficult.
International students also bring benefits in ‘soft power’. Graduates of British universities constitute a huge diaspora of contacts and friends across the world, making Britain an obvious first choice for business and research partnerships, and also political contacts.
Conclusion
Britain needs migration to keep its population stable, to contribute to economic growth, and in the short term at least to secure health and social care. None of these needs are going to go away. But if we are to manage the issue seriously, we also need to grasp some difficult nettles, not least proper funding for social care, higher education, and housing supply.
More detailed information on UK migration can be found on the website of the Migration Observatory and the Migration Advisory Committee.
