UK net migration from 2022 revised up from 606,000 to a record 745,000

net migration hit a record high in 2022 after the office for National statistics revised its previous estimate and it's not a small revision it now says net migration which is the number of people coming to the UK minus the number leaving wasn't 66,000 in 2022 as it previously estimated but 745,000 that's because last year a lot more people came to the UK and fewer left than they realized meanwhile the o net migration estimate for the 12 months to June this year is 672 th000 that suggests net migration is coming down slightly but it's a long way from the conservatives 2019 Manifesto promise to bring it down from the then level of 212,000 our senior political correspondent Paul magnamar reports hi I'm from Ghana and I came to UK eight months ago hi my name is Dena I'm from India I'm been here uh now8 month hi my name is Aisha I come from Ghana I've been in the UK since last year December so almost a year the care sector is a labor intensive industry labor that comes from all over the world 80% of the staff at Harwood house are international they don't about what they do for you know now they do anything for you so desperate is the need for workers in this industry getting a visa to move here from India is possibly not as hard as you may think it was uh pretty easy because uh I have got qualification like you know what they needed so uh I just applied through the portal and then we got an online interview and then we processed our visa and then we here so how quick was that process uh all around maybe a month maybe less than that I wow really quick then yes net migration into the UK last year was a record high 745,000 people where they come from though has changed in recent years the number of migrants from the EU has dropped significantly while immigration from non-eu countries has been rising sharply since 2021 and now hitting record highs International students make up the biggest portion of non-eu migrants at 39% but the main driver of the increase those here on work visas they make up 33% of arrivals up from 22% the previous year and almost half of those work in the Health and Social care sector it's not just push factors though making people leave their homes but the pull of life in the UK how much of a draw was salary the one I was earning in India it was um more than what I'm earning now but then always you earning more in India than in the UK yes so salary wasn't what Drew you a uh no because uh there were other things also which we considered like uh you know lifestyle here life quality here is very good is this home now this is home now yes forever more forever and ever wow can this industry work or cope without star from abroad no absolutely not no I'm categoric about that absolutely cannot there's it's not about money for local staff they just don't want to do this sort of work there are people who would just say look if you paid local staff more then they'd happily work here no they wouldn't because it's not about the money you you can't do this sort of work if you're not the right sort of person so paying people more actually isn't the answer if you pay people more you attract the wrong sort of people it's people that think well I need to earn a little bit more money I can earn if I work at asra I can earn this but if I work in care I can earn a little bit more but they're not minded for this sort of work the new conservative group of Tor MPS disagree so the answer to that is to improve the wages and conditions in the care sector they they say it's not about wages there simply aren't the people who actually want to do the work if you are suggesting that British people have no appetite for looking after others that we can only find abroad people who have that compassion and that vocation I I I I'm afraid I dispute that Westminster today silent no words on camera by a prime minister or Minister on this matter the Home Secretary released a statement saying the government remained completely committed to reducing levels of legal migration and that the biggest driver of immigration were Testament to our ability to use our immigration system to prioritize the skills we need we were elected in 2019 on a Manifesto promise to reduce net migration from the level it was at then which was over 200,000 we've now seen it treble in that time so on the whole You've got it wrong your party's got it wrong I'm afraid to say that our government has not closed the doors on the huge wave of migration that we've seen over the course of this Century the prime minister's spokesman said migration was putting quote unsustainable pressure on communities and councils many of his own MPS agree the trouble is they say it's yet another prime minister saying yet again the same thing and still no change now the government is on the cusp of announcing new measures but talking to backbench MP today who who are livid the point they make is it's too late we're going into the next election with these numbers they called it horrific they said the message was delivering really to voters is the quote the Tories have lost control now normally in situations like this where you've got numbers like today that you know going to anger parts of your party there is some Reach Out SP to MP today have you heard anything from some of the troublemakers have you heard anything from the Prime Minister from his team zilt zero they go on to point out that all that proves to show is that the Prime Minister and his team aren't just terrible at delivering policy they're terrible at basic policy politics Paul mamara well these are unprecedented numbers look back and look specifically down here in the bottom left corner to the 60s and 70s then more people left the UK than came to the UK in the 1990s net migration really takes off but the current levels are really like nothing we've seen before choices the government has made since brexit since in its words taking back control are playing out here now the number of migrants coming from the EU has gone down sharply but the number of non-u migrants look at this has rocketed now the on estimates it may now only just be slowing down a little that number in total 1.2 million immigrants came to the UK last year and here's the thing one in five of them almost were from India with big numbers too from Nigeria and China and as you've just seen this has been driven largely by students and workers coming to plug gaps in our hospitals and in our Care Homes Kathy thanks Karen well no government Minister was available to talk about immigration today but earlier I went to Westminster to speak to the shadow Home Secretary IET Cooper and began by asking her if labor would cut net migration we do think that the net migration figures should come down I think they reflect the conservatives failure over many years on the economy as well as on immigration and on Asylum the figures are three times higher than they were at the time of the last election but they also reflect the big increase in in work visas in migration for work because they've just not tackled the skill shortages training problems here at home so under a labor government would it come down to roughly the level it was at the last election in a broad I'm not asking for a Target just a broad sort of direction of travel well we think the net migration figures should come down but we also think we actually need the action on tackling this big increase in work visas 60% or more increase in work migration that's just in the last 12 months and that's why we're proposing to get rid of the unfair 20% wage discount that means that there's an incentive for overseas recruitment for employers to recruit from overseas rather than to train or to pay people fairly here at home if you're raising that minim minimum salary uh for work visas it's going to be more expensive to hire Care Home workers it's a shortage occupation so where are those workers going to come from the 20% discount is just unfair it means people who come from overseas are being paid 20% less than the going rate because they've been recruited from overseas that is really bad because in those occupations can't get well people here to do the job that may well be if they're not paying people fairly that may be why they can't get people to come and do the job if they're not paying the going rate yeah but social care is is one of the big sectors and you're exempting the you know Grassroots employ weting it doesn't apply apply so therefore how much of a dent would you make in the immigration figures which brings me back to my first question which I don't think you quite answered how much lower would immigration figures be under labor so we think that migration should come down we're not setting a specific Target orig was at the last election well we're not setting a specific Target and figure partly because there are always oneoff factors for example the pandemic obviously pushed numbers down and the Ukraine visas obviously increased numbers so there are come down and come down by a lot like half we do think they should come down and that should reflect actually there's three different areas that it should reflect it should reflect the uh the work on uh the the action to tackle the work visas requirements secondly secondly it would reflect the the changes as a result of Ukraine and Hong Kong which which we expect to happen anyway the third area is actually around Asylum because part of the reason the numbers have gone up is because the government is taking so long now to make decisions on Asylum C so were you happy with the level immigration was at the last election was that broadly in the right ballp so I think look we've got to start from where we are now we believe that net migration should come down we don't think it's right to set specific Targets in place I'm just talking broad direction of travel the last election was roughly where you were roughly happy with that I again I think we think the net migration figures should come down and we're not going to set a specific Target I know you want me to ask it will affect it will be affected by individual figures at that time of course the figures around work migration were much lower do you see the number of people wanting to come to this country as a mark of the success of Britain or is it a failure we've got to recognize immigration has been an important part of our country through generations and will continue to be so both both in terms of our economy and the need for international talent but also as part of our society but the system needs to be controlled and managed so that it's fair and at the moment it's not there's a lot of Chaos in the system there's no proper links between the immigration system and skills and training requirements or any of those things it's a very it's a very far cry from the days when your leader to win the election promised labor members that he would defend EU freedom of movement I just wonder whether you think labor as a party has got this whole subject wrong has been out of touch with the public mood for more than a decade we've been really clear we're not going back to free movement but the question now is how do we get the points based system to work properly so that you've got something that's fair so that you've got something that recognizes where we have acute skills shortages but doesn't use immigration as an alternative to tackling those skills shortages here in the UK and getting that investment in training as well Cooper thanks very much thank you now are we back on the road to austerity that was the warning today from The Institute for fiscal studies it's analysis of yesterday's Autumn statement says the Chancellor's tax cuts imply a very tight public spending squeeze in the future well our economics correspondent Helia ebrahimi is here how difficult are these numbers looking then Helia well Kieran we know that David Cameron Lord Cameron is back and I think the big question now is whether his Flagship policy of austerity with his old Chancellor George Osborne is also back because if you take a look at the decade before austerity you can see that public spending actually increased by a monster 40% but then you had George Osborne's 2010 budget and 32 billion pounds was slashed from departmental spending and because Health was protected the Hammerhead of austerity fell hardest on courts prisons local government but now let's take a look at Mr Hunt's plans because instead of a backdrop of double digit spending growth there were cuts of over 7% to nonprotected departments and yesterday's Autumn statement comes on top of that with an extra 20 billion pounds being rolled back now the institute for fiscal studies says this suggests a package of cuts that match the decade of austerity that we had back in the 2010s and Helia what does the chancellor say then about these potentially drastics spending cuts well Kieran he thinks that those tax cuts are very good for growing the economy he was very tight lipped about the spending cuts but let's take a look at how those two things pan out together we know the pressure on departments is all because Mr Hunt has chosen not to pass on the inflation Rises and that means in every year of the forecast you can see that realterm spending cuts now if I show you the tax cuts for each year you can see that they look almost identical to what's being stripped back from public spending and news on our living standards that's not good either is it no I'm afraid not Kieran the day after budgets is a bit like a mega nerd crunching event because on top of the ifs analysis you've also got some number crunching from resolution foundation and for the first time ever households will be poorer at the end of parliament than they were at the start and they'll be poorer by £1,900 a year today we also learned that energy prices will be going up again in January the 1st with an election next year the government is now running out of time if it wants to change this story before the voting begins

Channel: Channel 4 News

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Keywords: net migration, migration, uk, migration uk, uk net migration, immigration, migration figures, migration news, ons migration, ons, uk news, news uk, rishi, sunak, rishi sunak, uk migration figures, migration statistics, net migration figures, uk immigration, net migration uk 2023, net migration figures uk, migration statistics uk, net migration rate, uk population, uk net migration 2022, ons net migration

Id: PJfDZDMtn_o

Length: 14min 49sec (889 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 23 2023