Did James Cleverly reduce net migration by ‘300,000 people per year’?

During a Q&A at his party’s conference earlier today, Conservative leadership candidate James Cleverly MP highlighted a specific statistic from the seven months he was “personally” responsible for dealing with migration as home secretary.

He said: “In that seven months I reduced net migration by… 300,000 people per year.”  

Earlier this year we fact checked a similar claim from Robert Jenrick MP—a former immigration minister, and now one of Mr Cleverly’s rivals for the Conservative leadership.

The 300,000 figure appears to refer to the previous government’s estimate of the expected impact of a series of immigration measures which were announced in December 2023 and came into effect at different points in early 2024. It estimated that had these measures been in place, together with restrictions on international students bringing dependants (announced prior to Mr Cleverly becoming home secretary), around 300,000 people who came to the UK in the year to September 2023 would not have been able to come.

But figures for net migration since these measures were introduced are yet to be published, so we don’t yet know the extent of their actual impact. The most recent data from the Office for National Statistics only goes up to December 2023.

While we can’t say exactly how net migration has changed since these measures were introduced, Home Office statistics do show that visa applications for many of the visa categories impacted by the changes decreased in the year to June 2024 compared with the previous year.

We’ve contacted Mr Cleverly for comment and will update this article if we receive a response.