How many immigrants have arrived in the UK in recent years?
The British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe has sparked debate after claiming in an interview that the UK was being “colonised by immigrants”.
Sir Jim told Sky News: “The UK’s been colonised by immigrants really, hasn’t it. I mean the population of the UK was 58 million in 2020. Now it’s 70 million. That’s 12 million people.”
As many have pointed out, these figures are inaccurate. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) the estimated population of the UK in mid-2020 was 66.7 million, increasing to 69.5 million by mid-2025 (a provisional estimate subject to revision).
Sir Jim’s comments have been widely criticised, including by the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who described them as “offensive and wrong”.
However Reform UK leader Nigel Farage MP has said that “Britain has undergone unprecedented mass immigration that has changed the character of many areas in our country.”
In a statement on Thursday Sir Jim said: “I am sorry that my choice of language has offended some people in the UK and Europe and caused concern but it is important to raise the issue of controlled and well-managed immigration that supports economic growth.”
We’ve written in detail about net migration patterns in recent years as well as how it is measured—here’s a brief summary of what we know.
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How many people have come to the UK since 2020?
After the Covid-19 pandemic the UK saw a significant increase in immigration and net migration, both of which reached the highest levels on record in 2023. These numbers have since decreased substantially.
It’s worth noting that due to changes in methodology the Office for National Statistics says comparisons between estimates published before and after June 2021 should be treated with caution.
From the year ending June 2021 to June 2025 (the latest period for which we have directly comparable data) UK immigration totalled 5.6 million, while net migration totalled 2.7 million.
In 2020 immigration was estimated to be 662,000, and net migration 93,000—however as mentioned above these figures aren’t directly comparable with subsequent years.
It’s worth noting that while these figures will include some people who arrived in the country via irregular routes (like asylum seekers who arrived via small boat), the vast majority of net migration is accounted for by people arriving via legal routes (primarily for work and study, or as dependents of people arriving via these routes).
We don’t know with any certainty how many people are in the UK without the right to be here. The University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory has warned that studies attempting to put a number on the UK’s unauthorised migrant population should be treated with caution due to large margins of error.
How has immigration affected population growth?
Between mid-2020 and mid-2025 the UK population is estimated to have grown by approximately 2.75 million.
Because the figure for mid-2025 is a provisional estimate we don’t yet have a breakdown of the components of population growth between mid-2024 and mid-2025.
However, ONS data does show that annual population growth between mid-2020 and mid-2024 was almost entirely driven by net migration.