Net Migration Halved Last Year in Boost to Keir Starmer

Net migration to the UK almost halved last year in a boost to Sir Keir Starmer as he clamps down on immigration in a bid to fend off Nigel Farage and Reform 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 figures still largely cover the period before Labour came into power, so they do not account for the impact of measures announced by the prime minister this month to slash the number of people coming to the UK.

But home secretary Yvette Cooper said the drop in net migration is “important and welcome after the figures quadrupled to nearly a million” under the Conservatives.

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 ONS said the sharp fall was driven by a 49 per cent drop in non-EU nationals coming to the UK for work compared with the previous year, meaning 108,000 fewer arrivals.

That came alongside an 86 per cent drop in the number of family members brought to the UK by students, with 105,000 fewer arrivals, and a 35 per cent fall in the dependents of workers coming here.

The dramatic falls come after former home secretary James Cleverly last year introduced a series of measures as part of a Conservative drive to cut net migration, including bans on overseas students and care workers bringing family members to the UK.

“This drop is because of the visa rule changes that I put in place. Labour will try to claim credit for these figures but they criticised me at the time, and have failed to fully implement the changes,” Mr Cleverly said on Thursday.

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 from 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”.

On Thursday, the IPPR warned Sir Keir must be careful clamping down on migration further, or risk exacerbating the workforce crisis in the care sector.

There was also an uptick in the number of people who came to the UK on student visas, leaving the country following the full easing of Covid travel restrictions, the ONS said.

Sunder Katwala, director of the British Future think tank, said the major fall will surprise the public, who expected the figures to keep climbing.

“So Keir Starmer is in the unusual position for a PM of having exceeded expectations on immigration – though largely by not cancelling measures introduced by his predecessors,” he said.

He added: “That gives him an opportunity to take a more pragmatic approach, managing the pressures and keeping the gains of immigration – rather than competing in a political auction over which party can pretend to eliminate it.”

Net migration climbed to a record 906,000 in the year to June 2023, and it stood at 728,000 in the year up to June 2024. With fewer work and study visas being granted by the Home Office, it is expected that the overall estimated net migration to the UK will continue to fall.

The Conservatives have welcomed the fall in net migration and said it “only happened because of tough action from the last Conservative government”.

But shadow home secretary Chris Philp said “the figures are still too high and need to go down a lot further”. Kemi Badenoch said Mr Philp is “100 per cent right”, attacking Labour for reviewing Tory plans to hike the threshold for UK workers’ earnings to bring their spouses to the country.

“Numbers are still too high, and Starmer still keeps voting against every plan to bring them down further,” the Tory leader added. She said: “Only the Conservatives can fix immigration.”

The prime minister has already promised that the government’s new immigration measures will mean net migration falls “significantly” over the next four years.

Plans unveiled last week include tightened access to skilled worker visas and tougher English language requirements for spouses coming to the UK. The PM also introduced a wait of 10 years, up from five previously, to apply for permanent residency – unless migrants can prove a significant contribution to the UK.

Though Sir Keir did not set a target for how much the government wants to bring net migration down by, the Home Office estimated that the new policies could lead to a 100,000 drop in immigration per year by 2029.

In a speech this month announcing the measures, Sir Keir sparked a major backlash among his own MPs by warning that spiralling migration levels risked turning Britain into an “island of strangers”.

Critics condemned what they believed to be an attempt to play catch -p with Mr Farage amid Reform’s surge in the polls and following its triumph in the local elections.

Senior Labour MP Clive Lewis told The Independent: “It’s simply not sustainable for the prime minister to echo the language of Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech – invoking the idea of ‘living in a land of strangers.’

“This kind of language doesn’t just alienate communities, it drives people away from our country altogether. And if those at the top think this is a clever tactic to win another five years by rolling out the red carpet for Nigel Farage, they’re mistaken. We are losing far more progressive voters than we are gaining from Reform UK.”