The numbers
Politics Notebook #7: The Tories are talking tough on immigration, but are they doing anything other than talking?
This is not a post about the rights and wrongs of immigration.
This is not a post about whether the Rwanda plan can or will ever work.
This is a post about the numbers.
The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, intended to salvage the Rwanda immigration policy recently found unlawful by the Supreme Court, passed its second reading in the House of Commons yesterday evening.
The vote was preceded by frantic lobbying from Conservative backbenchers. Right-wingers warned the legislation was too weak to work and would be filleted in the courts, meaning migrants arriving by small boat would remain in the UK.
Centrist Tories warned they would pull their support if Rishi Sunak listened to the right and toughened up the Bill, saying Britain must honour its international commitments even if they limit the government’s ability to address illegal immigration.
The centrists voted for the Bill, the right abstained and the overall tally was ayes 313, noes 269.
Given the jitters prior to the vote, with talk of Labour tabling a motion of no confidence in the government if it lost the division, Number 10 is no doubt relieved to have won by a margin of 44 votes.
The Conservative spin machine, on the other hand, has been a little more bullish. They Xed this:
Let’s consider that claim: ‘Only Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives will do what is needed to stop the boats’.
This brings us to the numbers.
Here are the annual totals of people arriving in the UK by small boat:
The 2023 figure is obviously an improvement but only because the previous year’s total was so high. The Tories say they alone will stop the boats but they alone have been in government while small-boat crossings reached unprecedented levels.
The Conservatives’ problems are not confined to irregular migration (sometimes referred to as ‘illegal immigration’). The party’s 2019 election manifesto pledged that legal immigration numbers would come down.
The numbers are not good for the Tories here either.
In November, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revised its 2022 net migration estimates upwards by 139,000. It had previously estimated that 606,000 more people came to live in the UK than left to live elsewhere between January and December that year. It now reckoned that number was 745,000.
It’s not just that the Conservatives have broken their manifesto pledge to reduce immigration. It’s that they have broken it by almost three-quarters of a million immigrants last year alone. In fact, the updated ONS estimate means that 2022 saw the highest levels of immigration to the UK in at least sixty years. (The House of Commons Library briefing on immigration levels only goes back to 1964.)
There is an important caveat here. 2022 saw significant spikes in immigrant numbers because of 1) Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion and bombing campaign and 2) British overseas nationals from Hong Kong arriving as part of the government’s settlement scheme.
But even if we allow for these two unique circumstances, immigration levels have still risen significantly despite Tory promises to cut them. And since the Conservatives are keen to contrast their position with that of the Labour Party, we can look at the numbers here, too.
Again, they are not good for the Tories.
Cumulative net migration 1998-2010: 2,784,000 2011-2022: 3,631,000
Annual work visas granted 2010: 109,951 2023: 299,891
Estimated foreign-born population of the UK 2010: 7,234,000 2021: 9,614,000
Labour presided over a sea change in immigration, overseeing significant annual increases in net migration. However, far from reversing — or even halting — this direction of travel, the Conservatives have picked up the pace, driving net migration higher than under the Blair and Brown governments.
Whether you consider these trends positive or negative will come down to your outlook on migration, legal and otherwise, but nothing can change the numbers.
The Conservatives may claim that only they will stop the boats, but although the number of arrivals is meaningfully down on 2022, this is still the second-highest year for boat arrivals.
The Conservatives may say that they will control or cut legal migration, including by restricting work visas or raising the salary threshold, but last year they handed out almost three times as many visas as Labour did in its final year in office.
The Tories are trying to ride two horses, posing as believers in low immigration while presiding over historically high levels of inward migration. The gap between what they tell the voters and what they do in government is too wide to be sustainable. This is why, despite being pro-immigration himself, Sir Keir Starmer is able to land blows on the Prime Minister.
The Conservative Party talks tough on migration but the numbers tell a different story.