Net migration to Britain has passed 500,000 for the first time ever – twice as high as the recently upgraded forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility. The figure is quite stunning. Net migration had been expected to halve to just over 100,000 after Brexit, a figure the OBR doubled to 200,000 last week. So what’s going on? And how reliable is the data?
It’s a complex story, and the 504,000 headline figure can be deceptive. It’s a mixture of students flooding back after lockdown and a surge in Ukrainians and Hong Kongers who arrived here as part of one-off refugee policies under Boris Johnson. EU net migration actually turned negative: some 51,000 more people went back to Europe last year than arrived on British shores. The ONS also calculates this in different ways.
About a quarter of the non-EU migration is accounted for by students, counted as migrants by the ONS.
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