Immigration claims in the 2024 general election: fact checked
As polling day approaches, we’re rounding up the work we’ve done over the 2024 general election campaign in a series of easy-to-read guides to help you get the facts you need.
Claims about immigration have cropped up frequently during the election campaign, and this article lists our verdicts on some of the key claims we’ve seen from the major parties.
This isn’t an exhaustive list of the claims we’ve written about or fact checked, and there have been many accurate claims about immigration made too, which we’ve not necessarily covered. So we wouldn’t suggest using these round-ups to judge how honest any party is overall. At the same time, just because we haven’t written about a particular claim doesn’t mean we’ve verified it as true.
Please follow the links to read our full fact checks on each of the claims below: these include links to all the sources we’ve used (so you can check our work for yourself).
Migration is at record numbers under this Prime Minister
Net migration numbers have been the focus of much of the debate on immigration, with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer making the above claim during the BBC head-to-head debate with the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on 27 June.
Net migration did reach record levels in 2022 (Mr Sunak became Prime Minister in late October 2022). But data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows it’s estimated to have fallen by around 10% in 2023—a point Mr Sunak has himself made on a number of occasions.
It’s worth noting though that the level of net migration in 2023 was still nearly four times that in 2019, when the Conservatives pledged in their manifesto to bring down “overall numbers”.
[Rishi Sunak] welcomed more migrants in just two years… than arrived between 1066 and 2010
Reform UK claimed that in two years under Mr Sunak more migrants have arrived than between 1066 and 2010. This is not correct.
In the last two years, estimated immigration to the UK was approximately 2.5 million. While we don’t have data going back to 1066, between 1855 and 2010 alone, estimated immigration totalled 32.5 million.
[Small boat crossings] were down last year by a third
Another key figure that has been the focus of claims and counter claims is the number of small boat arrivals.
A central claim from the Conservatives has been that small boat arrivals are “down by a third year on year”, while on 12 June Mr Sunak said they’re down “over the last 12 months by a little less than that”.
By our calculations, these claims are both right. Government figures show that in 2023 the number of people arriving in the UK by small boat had decreased 36% compared to 2022. And in the 12 months up to 12 June 2024, the number of arrivals was 27% down on the previous 12 months.
The figures by calendar year, however, paint a different picture. Provisional figures for 2024 up to the end of June show an 18% increase in the number of small boat arrivals compared with the same period last year.
Talking about these figures, Mr Starmer said they were “record numbers”. That’s correct—2024 has set a new record for the first six months of a calendar year.
Returns have fallen through the floor
Talking about “people that don’t have a right to be here”, Labour’s shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson claimed “returns have fallen through the floor”.
It wasn’t clear what she meant by this because both voluntary and enforced returns have broadly risen since their lowest point around the first year of the pandemic. These returns cover many different categories of people, most of whom were not seeking asylum.
It’s possible Ms Phillipson was talking about longer-term trends. As this chart shows, the level of returns currently is significantly lower than it was in the early 2010s, though the data we have prior to that isn’t directly comparable with current figures.
[Labour’s] plans could see us take in 100,000 extra illegal migrants, from Europe, every single year
This 100,000 figure was circulated by the Conservative party last September in response to comments made by Mr Starmer about a potential future returns agreement with the EU. We’ve heard it repeated, with slight variations, multiple times since then, including during the election campaign.
As we’ve written before, this figure is a Conservative party estimate which stems from inaccurate analysis. It is not a reliable estimate and is based on a number of assumptions about what a future returns deal between the UK and the EU would look like.
We don't yet know the details of Labour's future policy, so there is no reliable way of knowing the number of migrants it would involve.
14 million new arrivals in 12 years
A Facebook ad from Reform UK claimed 14 million people will arrive in the UK in the next 12 years, but that’s not what the ONS’s population projections say.
The ONS projections Reform UK’s claim appears to be based on actually cover a 15-year period which started in mid-2021. The ONS told Full Fact that between now and mid-2036, its projections indicate 10.4 million will migrate to the UK.
Looking at net migration, the ONS forecasts that the UK’s population will grow by around 4.5 million over the next 12 years.
We know [the Labour party] believe in open borders
This claim was made by Conservative candidate (and former immigration minister) Robert Jenrick, but the contents of Labour’s 2024 manifesto do not appear to support his claim.
In fact, Labour’s manifesto pledges to “reduce net migration” and makes several other references to controlling and managing it. It also pledges to reform the “points-based migration system”, and create both a “new Border Security Command” and a “returns and enforcement unit”.