‘Whisper it, migration numbers have fallen’

WHAT is the best kept secret in Brit­ish politics?

It must be falling immigration. Al­most everyone knows that immigra­tion hit record highs in the last parlia­ment. Few people realise that the past couple of years have since seen some of the biggest ever reductions, too.

Having quadrupled after Brexit un­der then prime ministers Boris John­son and Rishi Sunak, net migration has now fallen by more than two-thirds from its record peak. It more than halved in 2024 – and keeps fall­ing in 2025. Yet, only one in six people realise that immigration went down last year. Most people think it kept rising – and more people think it will go up rather than down next year, too.

Politicians struggle for trust on im­migration. Governments made high-profile promises they could not keep. Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s ad­ministration wanted numbers to fall and has exceeded the expectations of a sceptical public. Yet, few have noticed.

What is going on? It is more diffi­cult to notice falling immigration than rising immigration. Ten million people in our society were born abroad. What is visible is the pres­ence of immigration, and ethnic di­versity more broadly. Annual chang­es are hard to perceive directly – so perceptions are often shaped by what people understand from politics and the media.

Home secretary Shabana Mahmood says immigration levels are dangerously out of control. This mes­sage has got louder as immigration numbers have fallen. Net migration has dropped by over half a million – yet, asylum claims have increased. The visible lack of control over small boats is driving the public politics of immigration much more than the overall number of people granted visas to live, work or study in Britain, and the public significantly overestimates the scale of asylum. Mahmood has made immigration her top priority – though her reforms will be judged not on their media recep­tion this autumn, but whether these changes help restore control in the Channel.

The scale of public misperceptions is a challenge to the broadcast media – given that, unlike some vocal news­papers, they have a mission to inform and explain impartially.

Efforts are made to put the data in context. But the BBC’s immigration re­view noted how Westminster politics can drive immigration reporting, mean­ing larger flows than asylum – such as work and study – go under-reported.

It would be a mistake to write off the public as unengageable. British Fu­ture’s latest in-depth study of attitudes¹ shows that views on immigration can polarise sharply between those of dif­ferent political viewpoints, more than almost any other issue. Yet, it also un­covers much more nuance, beneath the noise, than politi­cians on all sides cred­it the public with.

A sixth of people have broadly rejec­tionist views of im­migration. Reform leader Nigel Farage does reflect the views of the three in 10 people – including two-thirds of Reform UK voters – who say that im­migration is not discussed enough. Yet Reform voters are outliers in the intensity and negativity of their views on immigration.

The British Future study shows that half the public are still ‘balancers’ on immigration – recognising pressures on housing from high immigration, but also gains for the NHS, universi­ties and parts of the economy.

A majority do want numbers to come down – though only a quarter of the public support reductions to visas for study or most kinds of work. A quarter of people do not want any asylum seekers, but more want Brit­ain to play a part by combining con­trol with compassion. A ‘rights and responsibilities’ approach to citizen­ship makes sense, but the govern­ment’s proposals of settlement time­lines of 15, 20 and even 30 years are tougher than what the public would think fair.

The Starmer government found it easy to say that net migration of close to a million was unsustainable – and is still saying so as the numbers fall back below pre-Brexit levels.

But it has not said what level of im­migration it believes is sustainable. What if it was 200,000 – with political opponents saying it should be net 100,000, net zero or even lower, as Conservative MP and shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick’s ‘decade of net emigration’ proposes?

A political auction, promising ever-lower numbers, often overlooks the means and the impacts of delivering on slogans about how low net migra­tion could go. The ugly attempts this autumn to start a ‘deportation auc­tion’ showed how politicians mis­judge the public when they appeal to caricatures shaped by the loudest-voiced minority who can dominate social media and MPs’ inboxes.

Trade-offs matter in immigration policy, just as they do for taxation and spending. But there is no budget-style moment of parliamentary and pub­lic accountability. These can be chal­lenging for governments – as the chancellor’s attempt to make the numbers add up this week showed. But a real-world politics of immigra­tion requires a more transparent de­bate about how much immigration we need and want to keep, how to man­age the pressures it brings, and how we maximise the benefits to Britain.

Sunder Katwala