Net migration decreased last year, but remains higher than at the start of this Parliament

In a post on X (formerly Twitter) yesterday Rishi Sunak claimed: “Since I became Prime Minister, net migration has fallen by 10%.” 

A ‘community note’ (which Twitter describes as “empowering people on [the platform] to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading posts”) appears under it.

Mr Sunak’s claim is true, though it may be helpful to have some extra context.

Data published this week by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows estimated net migration—the difference in the number of people immigrating to the UK and emigrating—was 685,000 in the year to December 2023. This is a fall of approximately 10% from the ONS’s updated estimate of 764,000 for the year to December 2022. 

That said, despite this decrease, net migration is still nearly four times higher than in 2019, when the Conservative party said it would bring “overall numbers” down in its manifesto. 

Estimated total immigration in the year to December 2023 decreased slightly compared to the previous year, from 1,257,000 to 1,218,000. However it has increased by almost 55% since December 2019, when it was 788,000. 

The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford notes that net migration “remained at unusually high levels” in 2023, continuing to exceed “pre-Brexit, pre-Covid levels of roughly 200,000 to 300,000” a year. However it said a “sharp drop in visa grants early this year and an increase in student emigration hint at the start of a long-expected fall in net migration”.

Other parties such as Reform UK also discussed the new net migration statistics as general election campaigns got into full swing. 

Reform’s leader Richard Tice also said net migration levels were equivalent to “a city well bigger than the size of Manchester”. The 2021 census recorded Manchester’s population as 551,900, compared to the net migration estimate of 685,000 in the year to December 2023.