Migration is too high, says party in charge of migration for 14 years

When Rishi Sunak made ‘stopping the boats’ one of his five priorities after entering No. 10, he ensured that immigration (legal and illegal) would become one of the big issues heading into an election. It seemed, for a while, that the government thought the emphasis on migration would work in its favour. It hasn’t exactly turned out that way.

The migration crackdown announced by James Cleverly at the end of last year is designed to reduce the headline number of net migrants to the UK, after it was reported that in 2022 that net migration reached a record high of 745,000. The policy instruments announced by the Home Secretary to reduce migration are so blunt, they are likely to achieve the government’s desired outcomes, if not by creating a lot of havoc and unintended consequences along the way.

But the government has more than a year’s worth of data to be released before those new rules kick in (from April this year), the next bulk of which has been released this morning.