What should the UK’s net migration target be?

The cabinet is divided over how to manage record levels of migration to the UK, a hot-button issue that looks set to define the next general election.

“Immigration has long been a Conservative fault line,” said Camilla Tominey in The Telegraph, “but news that net migration may hit one million when new figures are released [later this month] appears to have widened the chasm.”

Ministers are “at odds”, she said, over what the net migration target should even be.

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Leavers ‘on the warpath’

A succession of Tory prime ministers going back to David Cameron have campaigned on a promise to reduce migration to the “tens of thousands”, yet have never got close to achieving this. The Conservatives “ditched” the “longstanding pledge” in their 2019 manifesto, but Home Secretary Suella Braverman has said it remains her “ultimate aspiration” in the long term, said the BBC.

Last year, net migration – the number of people arriving in the country minus those leaving – hit a record 504,000, far higher than it was before the UK formally left the EU three years ago. Oxford University’s Migration Observatory said this was the result of “several factors” that came together at the same time, including the war in Ukraine, but that on average over the past few decades the UK has “experienced broadly similar levels of migration compared to other high-income countries”.

This year, a sharp increase in non-EU migrants entering the UK to study, work or escape conflict or oppression is expected to see this number rise as high as 997,000 when the Office for National Statistics reports the latest numbers on 25 May.

Official forecasts released by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in March predict net migration to Britain is likely to fall to an average of around 240,000 a year from 2026-27 onwards.

But this year’s possible one million milestone explains “why leavers like Suella Braverman, having vowed that Brexit would allow us to ‘take back control’ of our borders, are now on the warpath”, said Tominey.

Who will win out?

The home secretary yesterday fired a “warning shot to cabinet colleagues blocking proposals to reduce numbers”, said The Times. Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference on Monday, she urged the party to reaffirm its promise to “get overall immigration numbers down”.

Politics Home said Braverman’s comments “have been viewed by some as a criticism of fellow Cabinet ministers who are more willing to relax visa rules to help fill gaps in the workforce”.

Her tougher approach appears “at odds” with the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, who has argued that higher immigration benefits the economy by increasing GDP, said the i news site. He is backed by the likes of the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, who successfully watered down proposals to limit the number of dependants foreign students can bring to the UK.

Last week Rishi Sunak’s official spokesperson denied the prime minister had two contradictory aims – to reduce migration on the one hand but boost it on the other – and said he did not believe Sunak had “ever put a figure on” by how much he would like to see net migration fall.

Yet reports that net migration could near a million this year is “likely to place fresh pressure” on the prime minister, the Daily Express reported.

Whatever the final number, “the scale is unprecedented”, said Tominey, and “with members of his top team now at odds over the issue, it arguably poses a bigger challenge for the Prime Minister than the 45,000 who arrived illegally by dinghy last year”.