Net migration halving is not because of measures introduced by Labour, GB News Home and Security Editor Mark White has said in a detailed analysis of new Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures.
The data estimates that net migration has halved from 860,000 in the year ending December 2023 to 431,000 in the year ending December 2024.
The drop is the largest ever recorded for a 12-month period, and GB News’s Bev Turner put it to Mark that Labour will spin the development as a much-needed boost.
“That would be wrong if they did that because these are changes brought in by the previous Conservative government that have seen this reduction in net migration”, he explained.
Mark White delivered cutting-edge analysis shortly after the net migration figures were revealed
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“The number of people immigrating minus the number of people emigrating is provisionally estimated to be 431,000 in the year ending 2024, compared with 860,000 a year earlier.”
“They’ve rounded that up again, haven’t they?”, Bev pointed out.
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“Well spotted”, said Mark. “More than 130,000 is that sort of rounding up error if we want to describe it as that.
“From 728,000, we were talking about the last time we did this, to 860,000, that’s not inconsiderable and that probably tells you that 431,000 is not going to be that.
“It’s probably going to be 500,000 at least once they have done that rounding up.
“It’s about a 49 per cent decrease in immigration for work compared to the previous estimate.
Illegal migration is marked as 'irregular migration'
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“Just to complicate it further, you have effectively your ONS figures showing us to the year ending last year and the Home Office are also putting out a bunch of stats that take us into the first quarter of this year.
“It shows 192,000 visas were granted to main applicants in all work categories in the year ending March 2025, 39 per cent than the year ending March 2024, but 40 per cent more than in 2019.
“23,000 were for ‘Health and Care Worker’ visas, that’s 85 per cent fewer than the peak in 2023. That’s important because the Conservatives tightened this category preventing those coming across to work in the care industry bringing dependents. That’s having an effect.
“There were 403,000 sponsored study visas granted to foreign students in the year ending March 2024, 10 per cent fewer than in the year ending March 2024. That’s again because of Conservative policies around denying students the ability to bring dependents.
Mark White spoke to Bev Turner on GB News
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“Visas issued to dependents of students were 83 per cent lower at 18,000 compared to the year ending March 2024.”
“That’s a significant drop”, Bev noted. “That’s because it isn’t as attractive to come here and study if you’re a mature student and you can’t bring your wife and kids.”
Mark pointed out that the figures given for ‘irregular migration’, or ‘illegal migration’ are out of date.
The GB News Home and Security editor explained: “We know the figures are up to 13,000 already. We had 800 who crossed yesterday.
“There were 44,000 irregular arrivals detected in the year ending March 2025, 14 per cent more than the previous year.
“Small boats accounted for 38,000, 86 per cent of the total irregular arrivals in the year ending March 2025, 22 per cent more arrivals than the previous year but 17 per cent fewer than in 2022.
“Afghans were the most prominent nationality on the small boats. They will be given rights to remain because if you come from a country like Afghanistan, it’s not considered to be safe.”
