Net migration to the UK is likely to fall significantly in the coming years but remain at pre-Brexit levels of about 300,000, analysis by academic experts suggests.
Net migration was a record 606,000 in the 12 months to June 2022, up 24% on the previous year, prompting Rishi Sunak to say “numbers are too high, it’s as simple as that, and I want to bring them down”.
The sharp increase has been driven by several factors, including the arrival of refugees from Ukraine and Hong Kong on special visa schemes as well as rapid rises in both student and work visas.
The analysis, by experts from the Migration Observatory at Oxford University and the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, argues that some of these forces are likely to unwind in the years ahead regardless of government policy, with many students returning home after two or three years, for example.
By examining typical “stay rates” for different groups of migrants, the report predicts a significant increase in emigration – people leaving the UK.
“High immigration leads to high emigration, but not immediately – there is a lag of two to three years. Unless there is a large change in emigration behaviour from what we have observed in the past, it is reasonable to expect that emigration will increase between now and 2025, bringing down net migration, even if the number of people arriving in the UK remains high by historical standards,” the report said.
Based on these stay rates, and other factors such as the tailing off in arrivals from Ukraine and Hong Kong, the analysis suggests net migration could decline to 250,000-350,000 by 2030.
Alan Manning, professor of economics at LSE and co-author of the report, said: “Most plausible scenarios involve net migration falling in the coming years. But many different factors affect the outlook, including what share of international students switch to long-term work visas, whether work visa numbers continue to increase as sharply as they have done in the past few years, and what happens to asylum applications.”
He added: “The unpredictability means it’s very hard for policymakers to guarantee that they will deliver a specific level of net migration.”
Conservative leaders, from David Cameron on, repeatedly pledged to reduce net migration to the “tens of thousands” and consistently failed to do so. Boris Johnson’s 2019 manifesto omitted that promise, pledging instead to “fix our immigration system” – but it did claim that “overall numbers will come down”. Sunak has promised to “stop the boats” transporting migrants across the Channel to the UK.
Instead, net migration has soared, from 219,000 in 2019, before the Covid pandemic, to more than 600,000 last year – prompting an increasingly fierce debate in the Tory party, with home secretary Suella Braverman recently warning of a “hurricane” of mass migration.
The Migration Observatory’s Madeleine Sumption points out that the key driver of the increase in net migration has been people coming to the UK to work, in particular in the health and social care sector.
“One of the striking findings is that if current trends continue, work visas look set to be the largest factor shaping overall net migration by some distance. Work-related migration has mostly been driven by health and care. So future migration patterns will be particularly sensitive to developments in that sector,” she said.
In the year ending June 2023, the Home Office issued about 78,000 work visas to care and senior care workers, and just over 35,000 to doctors and nurses, as the NHS struggled to fill thousands of vacancies.
The government’s recently announced NHS workforce plan is intended to reduce reliance on overseas workers by training more UK recruits – but is likely to take some years to have an effect.
