Sir Keir Starmer has vowed to cut immigration “significantly” as he called the increase in people coming to the UK recent years “off the scale”.
The prime minister launched a stinging attack on the Tories’ handling of UK borders as revised estimates revealed net migration to the UK hit a record 906,000 in 2023.
Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures indicated the measure for the difference between the number of people arriving and leaving the country reached the higher than previously thought peak in the 12 months to June last year, after being revised up 166,000 from the initial estimate of 740,000.
The estimates, covering the previous Conservative government’s administration prior to the general election, have since dropped by 20% and stood at 728,000 in the latest period for the year to June 2024.
A similar change has been made to the provisional figure for net migration in the year to December 2023, which was initially estimated to be 685,000 and is now thought to be 866,000 - an increase of 181,000.
Meanwhile, the cost of the UK’s asylum system has risen to £5billion, the highest level of spending on record and up by more than a third in a year, according to separate Home Office data published at the same time.
The figures prompted Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to call a Downing Street press conference on Thursday afternoon.
Sir Keir said “hard graft” was the only way to drive down net migration, and sought to blame the previous government for overseeing a purposeful four-fold increase in the numbers coming to the UK.
Facing questions from broadcasters, the Prime Minister said: “When you say people have been let down, you are absolutely right because they were promised by the last government that we would get control of our borders and we had a government that completely lost control of our borders.
“This sort of increase is unprecedented. It is off the scale what has happened in four short years. The way to get it down is the hard graft, not the gimmicks but the hard graft of driving it own on the skills agenda, migration advisory committee, making sure we are cracking down on employers that are breaking the rules.”
The Prime Minister earlier described the situation as “really stark”, and claimed numbers had quadrupled since 2019.
He added: “This isn’t immigration that has gone up by a few thousand. This is policy under the last government that has driven immigration up to record levels, a complete loss of control.”
The Prime Minister said he would not place an “arbitrary cap” on net migration, but insisted he wanted to drive the numbers down.
Asked by broadcasters if he would set a cap, as previous governments had done, Sir Keir Starmer said: “I want to see immigration come down significantly. I said that before the election, I said that during the election, I say it again here today.
“That means bearing down on the influences that have driven it up this high with the measures that I set out a moment ago. We had a supposed cap in place for the best part of a decade, and it didn’t have any meaningful impact on reducing immigration.
“So I don’t think setting an arbitrary cap, which is what previous governments have done, is the way forward. But do I want it to significantly reduce? Yes, I do, and that’s what our plan will achieve.”
Downing Street earlier said the statistics “show that the Government inherited a situation from the previous government where they had effectively run Britain as an experiment in open borders” and this happened “due to the policies and decisions taken by the last government”.
Former home secretaries James Cleverly and Suella Braverman, who have both courted hopes of becoming Tory leader in the past, claimed credit for the drop in numbers while they led the Home Office.
But shadow home secretary Chris Philp said net migration “remains far too high” and the UK needs stricter border controls.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage branded the figures “horrendous”.
In a speech on Wednesday, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said there had been a “collective failure of political leaders from all parties over decades” to grasp migration, adding: “On behalf of the Conservative Party, it is right that I as the new leader accept responsibility, and say truthfully we got this wrong.
“I more than understand the public anger on this issue. I share it.”
The revisions are as a result of the ONS continuing to review its net migration figures as more complete data becomes available as well as improving how it estimates the migration behaviour of people arriving in the UK from outside the European Union.
Better analysis of the number of people coming to the UK amid the conflict in Ukraine has also been taken into account.
Some 1.2 million people are estimated to have arrived in the UK in the year ending June 2024, while 479,000 are likely to have left.
This compares with 1.3 million who arrived in the UK in the year to June 2023 and 414,000 who left.
The drop in the overall level of net migration has been driven mainly by a fall in the number of dependants arriving in the UK on study visas from outside the EU.
ONS director Mary Gregory said long-term international migration to the UK had been at “unprecedented levels” since 2021, with the war in Ukraine and the immigration system brought in after Brexit among the reasons behind this.
“While remaining high by historic standards, net migration is now beginning to fall and is provisionally down 20% in the 12 months to June 2024.”
