Friday, May 23, 2025
Consequences
The paper says that the Office for National Statistics said 948,000 people came to Britain in 2024, with 519,000 leaving in the year to December 2024:
Net migration to the UK almost halved last year, new figures have revealed, sparking concerns over a worker shortage in the UK.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said 948,000 people came to Britain in 2024, with 519,000 leaving in the year to December 2024.
The 431,000 net migration figure is around half the 860,000 level seen a year earlier, driven by a fall in non-EU workers and students coming to the UK, and marks the largest fall on record.
The Tories have claimed credit for the drop under measures they introduced shortly before losing the election, but it comes just a week after Sir Keir Starmer’s controversial speech about reducing migration even further, claiming the UK had become an “island of strangers”.
Despite both Labour and the Conservatives celebrating the figures, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think tank warned Sir Keir must balance cutting migration numbers with the need to support Britain’s ailing public services, with particular concern about exacerbating the shortage of workers in the health and social care - many of whom come from overseas.
The construction and care industries are already warning of shortages thanks to the new measures Labour has introduced, today claiming that the sharp fall in net migration reveals those changes “could not have come at a worse time”.
Daniel Austin, chief executive and co-founder at ASK Partners, an independent property lender, said: “The government’s tightening of immigration rules risks deepening the UK’s housing crisis at precisely the wrong moment. The construction sector is already under intense pressure, from spiralling build costs and the impact of regulatory changes like the Building Safety Act, to planning bottlenecks and a chronic shortage of skilled labour. Limiting access to foreign workers threatens to compound these issues, further stalling progress on desperately needed housing.”
Care providers have warned that Sir Keir’s fresh crackdown on visas for the sector, which will see care homes banned from employing overseas workers, will shut down services and leave older and disabled people without access to safe care.
The latest government data shows 26,100 people between April last year and April 2025 came to the UK on a health and care worker visa. This is down from 143,900 on figures for March 2023 to March 2024.
Dr Jane Townson OBE, chief executive of the Homecare Association, which represents home care providers, told The Independent this month that the prime minister’s measures will “force more homecare providers to shut their doors”.
The government may well believe that cutting migration is a good news story but there are consequences for public services. They need to be careful what they wish for.
