2024: A year in UK migration issues

After 14 years of Conservative leadership, Labour stepped into the spotlight with a mixed inheritance: unusually high net migration, a stubbornly large asylum backlog, and continued small boat arrivals. What has 2024 brought in the migration debate, and where are we heading next?

Tories out, Labour in

Fourteen years of Conservative leadership saw a significant focus on migration: promises to cut net migration to the “tens of thousands” were a key part of the Conservative platforms in 2010 and 2015. A liberalisation of legal migration routes for non-EU citizens under Boris Johnson contributed to soaring migration levels post-Brexit and post-pandemic. By the end of 2023, the pendulum had swung back towards restriction, with a series of measures announced to reduce work, family and study migration. Meanwhile, the advent of small boat crossings from 2018 onwards culminated in the Rwanda Policy and Illegal Migration Act, which aimed to end access to the asylum system for people arriving without permission. The Conservative election campaign focused on its recent visa restrictions and its plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Keir Starmer’s Labour party thus inherited newly implemented policies designed to roll back some of the Johnson-era liberalisations and reduce migration levels. It said it would keep the Conservative restrictions in place, with the exception of the minimum income requirement for family members, which is being reviewed by the Migration Advisory Committee. Cancelling the Rwanda plan, Labour has promised instead to “smash the gangs” that facilitate unauthorised arrivals in the UK.

Legal migration hits record highs

During the election campaign, all the major parties agreed with the proposition that net migration is too high. For Labour, reducing net migration from its current levels was a key election pledge. Policy restrictions introduced in early 2024 by the Conservatives mean that this is almost certain to happen even without any further rule changes.

The Conservatives’ restrictions targeted the two main drivers of net migration in 2023: work and student migration. Care workers and most international students were banned from bringing their family members to the UK, while the general salary threshold private sector employers must pay to sponsor skilled workers increased from £26,200 to £38,700. The Home Office also increased its scrutiny of applications to sponsor migrant care workers following widespread reports of exploitation in the sector.

How have these changes affected migration levels? In the year ending June 2024, net migration was 728,000, far above pre-Brexit levels of around 250,000 but 20% lower than its peak (906,000 in the year ending June 2023). The full impact of the policy changes is not yet visible in the data because the figure includes the second half of 2023 before the restrictions were introduced. Visa data, however, show sharp falls in applications from international students’ family members and health and care workers, which will be better reflected in the 2024 net migration figures (released in May).

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Once in government, Labour kept most of the policy changes made by the Conservatives in place. The exception was the increase in the income threshold British citizens must earn to bring migrant family members to the UK from £18,600 to £38,700. The threshold has been held at £29,000 while the Migration Advisory Committee reviews the policy. We’ll find out their thoughts next year, but this is unlikely to have a huge impact on net migration levels because these family members make up a relatively small share of overall migration.

On work migration, Labour’s plan is to link migration and skills policy—to reduce their reliance on the migration system, sectors requesting high numbers of work visas will be required to create training plans. It is not clear whether this on its own will affect migration, as the Migration Advisory Committee noted in its 2024 annual report.

Whether Labour plans further measures to reduce migration remains unclear. More details will likely come next year when the government is set to publish a white paper.

From “stop the boats” to “smash the gangs”

Around 35,000 people crossed the Channel in small boats by late December 2024, up by around a fifth compared to last year but around 10,000 fewer than in 2022. The reasons for this increase are not clear. Crossings go up and down for many reasons, and it is usually difficult to disentangle them. The government attributed higher numbers to unusually calm weather in the second half of the year when most crossings occur. That said, it is not clear how much weather affects crossings over long periods (we know that it has an impact on the timing of crossings in the short run).

After cancelling the Rwanda scheme, Labour began implementing its plans to “smash the gangs”. It set up a Border Security Command to coordinate investigations, committed £150m to it over the next two years, and aims to introduce legislation in the new year giving it expanded “counterterrorism-style” powers. The government also increased cooperation with Europol and European partners and signed security agreements with Iraq and several Western Balkan countries to tackle transnational gangs. Any impacts on small boat crossings are yet to be seen.

The UK’s large and expensive backlog of asylum applications continued to pose challenges in 2024. It stood at around 97,000 applications at the end of September, slightly higher than at the start of the year. In its first three months in power, Labour was not able to reduce the backlog: it says that this is because the previous government had stopped conducting asylum interviews following the Illegal Migration Act. Labour has resumed processing applications and says decisions are now picking up. Next year will thus be the key test of Labour’s ability to reduce the backlog, as well as an additional asylum appeals backlog, which has been building up in the courts.

Another focus of the government is to return more people without a legal right to be in the UK. The number of people removed from the UK fell sharply in the second half of the 2010s, though it has partly recovered since. Labour has expanded reintegration programmes in countries of origin and is continuing the previous government’s plans to increase detention capacity. It also promised to negotiate new returns agreements, adding to those signed by the previous government in recent years. Returns do seem to be increasing. Considering both enforced removals and voluntary departures, around 29,000 people were returned in 2024 by 7 December – about a quarter more than the year before and the highest number since 2017. However, it is difficult to know how much of this increase results from Labour’s activities in office and how much is just a continuation of the existing trend we saw under the previous government.

What next?

So, where does this leave the UK as we head into 2025?

Lower visa grants mean immigration is very likely to fall. Emigration has also been rising. This means that, in theory, net migration should continue to fall. We have been saying that for a while now, and while the data keep appearing to prove us right, repeated revisions to previous ONS data mean the numbers, mysteriously, kept getting bigger – with migration falling from an ever-higher peak. As a result, even a 50% fall in net migration would still mean levels well above the pre-Brexit average. The impacts of higher migration are complex: good for employers in the care sector and non-Russell group universities who saw a boom in student recruitment, challenging for infrastructure and the housing market, which often do not keep up with population growth.

The coming year is set to be a busy one. The Migration Advisory Committee will report to the Home Office on the minimum income requirement for the family members of British citizens and settled residents, requiring Labour to take a position on this question. It remains to be seen how much detail the recently announced White Paper will provide. Will Labour make any further changes to student visas? Is it happy to keep the salary thresholds for skilled workers in place, or will it propose further changes? What will it do about the health and care sector, which, despite a decline in visa grants, remains the largest user of long-term work visas? Will it leave the Ukraine and Hong Kong BNO visas untouched? Will it entertain Youth Mobility deals with other countries—particularly the EU, which has been pushing for a new scheme?

The future trends in small boat arrivals are extremely difficult to project. Commentators will be keen to pin any increases or decreases on policy changes (has the cancellation of Rwanda had an impact? What about efforts to tackle smuggling gangs?). In reality, it will be very difficult to tell whether ups or downs in the numbers result from policy or something else entirely.

Indeed, some key factors lie outside the UK, such as the conflicts and instability around the world. Just as the fall of Kabul was followed by larger numbers of Afghan asylum seekers, asylum policy watchers will have a keen eye on what happens next in Syria. While Syrian asylum seekers would face many barriers coming to the UK, Ukrainians do not: stability or further chaos in Ukraine could thus have a material effect.