Monday, October 16, 2023
Another Brexit failure
For those of us who remember the racist campaign run by a number of leave-orientated organisations back in 2016, the claim that we need to leave the EU to curb immigration was the most ridiculous.
After all, the free movement of individuals within the EU served to only benefit the UK economy, while the people these campaigns were really targetting, those with a different skin colour to them, were entering the UK from outside the economic free trade area, and in many cases had legitimate reasons to do so.
Nevertheless, the implicit claim behind Nigel Farage's Breaking Point poster was that if we leave the EU then net migration will fall. Naturally, that hasn't happened and Brexit is one of the reasons why that is the case.
The Mirror reports that estimates from the Migration Observatory at Oxford University and the London School of Economics (LSE) suggest around 250,000 to 350,000 more people will arrive than depart a year by 2030, meaning net migration to the UK is unlikely to fall below pre-Brexit levels by the end of the decade.
The study finds that predictions of lower net migration levels following Brexit are unlikely to happen - largely due to a significant increase in work visas. Rishi Sunak was forced to deny he'd lost control of rising migration but said numbers were “too high” earlier this year amid a backlash from Tory MPs over Brexit commitments to take back control of Britain's borders. Conservative-led Governments have been promising to reduce the numbers for more than a decade.
The latest forecast, based on migration trends and official data, suggests that high levels of immigration over the last two years may lead to more people leaving between 2023 and 2025. That would largely be driven by international students, while smaller numbers of people coming from Ukraine and Hong Kong.
LSE Professor Alan Manning, who co-authored the report, said: "Nobody can predict exactly what will happen to net migration, but we can set out some realistic scenarios. And 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. The unpredictability means it's very hard for policymakers to guarantee that they will deliver a specific level of net migration."
Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory, said that health and care visas were helping to keep the figures high. "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," she said. So future migration patterns will be particularly sensitive to developments in that sector."
Record numbers of small boats also continue to cross the channel, largely because the UK Government did not negotiate a return clause in the Brexit agreement, but also because the government have not put enough resources into assessing asylum claims and have refused to set up an assessment centre on the other side of the channel.
Nevertheless, the implicit claim behind Nigel Farage's Breaking Point poster was that if we leave the EU then net migration will fall. Naturally, that hasn't happened and Brexit is one of the reasons why that is the case.
The Mirror reports that estimates from the Migration Observatory at Oxford University and the London School of Economics (LSE) suggest around 250,000 to 350,000 more people will arrive than depart a year by 2030, meaning net migration to the UK is unlikely to fall below pre-Brexit levels by the end of the decade.
The study finds that predictions of lower net migration levels following Brexit are unlikely to happen - largely due to a significant increase in work visas. Rishi Sunak was forced to deny he'd lost control of rising migration but said numbers were “too high” earlier this year amid a backlash from Tory MPs over Brexit commitments to take back control of Britain's borders. Conservative-led Governments have been promising to reduce the numbers for more than a decade.
The latest forecast, based on migration trends and official data, suggests that high levels of immigration over the last two years may lead to more people leaving between 2023 and 2025. That would largely be driven by international students, while smaller numbers of people coming from Ukraine and Hong Kong.
LSE Professor Alan Manning, who co-authored the report, said: "Nobody can predict exactly what will happen to net migration, but we can set out some realistic scenarios. And 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. The unpredictability means it's very hard for policymakers to guarantee that they will deliver a specific level of net migration."
Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory, said that health and care visas were helping to keep the figures high. "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," she said. So future migration patterns will be particularly sensitive to developments in that sector."
Record numbers of small boats also continue to cross the channel, largely because the UK Government did not negotiate a return clause in the Brexit agreement, but also because the government have not put enough resources into assessing asylum claims and have refused to set up an assessment centre on the other side of the channel.
The Tories have lost control of the situation and their promises have turned out to be irrelevant and meaningless.
