Labour’s pledges on migration: the data

by Mihnea Cuibus

 

After more than a year in government, has Labour made progress towards its pledges on migration? In this piece, we examine six pledges – to bring down net migration, lower reliance on overseas workers, reduce small boat arrivals, clear the asylum backlog, end the use of asylum hotels, and accelerate the removal of people without legal status in the UK.

Both net migration and the number of foreign workers coming to the UK declined sharply in Labour’s first year in office. These trends were in line with the government’s commitments, though they were largely driven by policies introduced by the previous government, which led to a sharp increase in net migration followed by a sharp decline. Returns have increased under the current government. However, the number of people arriving by small boat has risen substantially. The asylum backlog of people awaiting initial decisions has declined, but the number of people in hotels has not – largely because of a rapidly growing asylum appeals backlog in the courts.

The impact of many of Labour’s policies on migration remains to be seen. The Border Security, Asylum, and Immigration Act became law in December 2025. Key measures that have been announced – such as changes making it harder for migrants to obtain permanent settlement in the UK, or reforms to the asylum system towards a model aimed at temporary protection – are yet to be implemented.

The data allow us to track general progress towards key pledges, though they do not always tell us everything we might want to know. For example, it is often difficult to know how much impact specific policies had on the trends in the data. In addition, the government’s success or failure in relation to some of its broader aims cannot be assessed at all using public data. This commentary explains what the data do and do not tell us about the Labour government’s progress towards its goals.

Pledge 1: Bringing down net migration

Net migration to the UK – the difference between immigration and emigration – fell to an estimated 204,000 in the year ending June 2025. That was 78% lower than its 2023 peak, and lower than during most of the previous decade. Net migration reached record levels after Brexit, rising to 944,000 in the twelve months to the end of March 2023.

Net migration was already expected to decline from 2024 onwards, regardless of the change in government or any new policies. That was for two reasons – immigration fell after the introduction of visa restrictions by the previous government, and emigration of international students rose following a boom in arrivals in 2021-23 (though a higher-than-expected share stayed in the UK).

Figure 1

The government has maintained the restrictions introduced by the Conservatives in 2024. These include a ban on partners and children of care workers and most overseas students, the removal of the going rate discount for migrants in shortage occupations, and a rise in the skilled worker salary threshold from £26,200 to £38,700. Labour raised that threshold again in 2025 to £41,700 per year (roughly in line with inflation). The government has maintained the £29,000 threshold for family migrants.

The government introduced new restrictions after an immigration White Paper in May 2025. In July 2025, it closed the Skilled Worker route for social care, made some middle-skilled occupations ineligible for work visas, and ended the ability of remaining middle-skilled workers to bring dependants to the UK. In September 2025, the government substantially restricted refugee family reunion. It also announced changes in November 2025 that will see many migrants face considerably longer waits before being granted permanent settlement in the UK, though it remains highly uncertain whether these proposals will have any impact on migration patterns.

The data show Labour made progress towards its promise to lower net migration (a clear target was never defined). Yet the fall in net migration results from the measures of both the current and the previous administrations. In addition, numbers alone do not tell us much about the impact of net migration. This depends in large part on who is migrating, not just how many.

Pledge 2: Reducing reliance on overseas workers

Labour has said that UK employers should reduce their reliance on overseas workers, and that too many work visas had been issued in previous years. Most of the growth in work migration after 2021 came from the health and care industry, particularly after care workers were added to the shortage occupation list in 2022.

The Conservative government introduced restrictions on foreign workers in early 2024 – a rise in the minimum income threshold for Skilled Worker visas, a ban on care workers bringing their partners and children to the UK, and increased scrutiny of employers applying to sponsor care worker visas. These were maintained by Labour. The government announced further restrictions in the immigration White Paper. The care worker route has been closed to new applicants coming from overseas in July 2025, though people will still be able to switch into it from within the UK until 2028. The skills threshold for Skilled Worker visas has also been raised to degree-level. This means that middle-skilled jobs in industries like construction now only qualify for this route on a time-limited basis – a new temporary shortage list was created for these, which will be subject to periodic review by the MAC. People coming to the UK for these middle-skilled jobs will no longer be eligible to bring dependants with them.

In addition to the new restrictions, the government pledged to improve training and reduce demand for overseas workers by linking policies on immigration and skills. The MAC has been tasked to collaborate with Skills England and other institutions on labour market policies, review demand for overseas visas in key sectors, and proactively monitor sectors which experience skill shortages. However, it is not clear whether or how these measures will affect the number of people coming to the UK. Even if the government succeeds in improving domestic skills, this will not automatically translate into fewer migrants, as the MAC has pointed out.

Around 52,000 Skilled Worker visas were granted in the twelve months to 30 September 2025. That was 55% lower than a year before, and marked a 75% decline in two years. Health and care visa grants fell most, even before the care route was fully closed in July 2025. That likely reflected changes in the Home Office to scrutinise sponsorship applications in the care sector more carefully and step up enforcement against employers who break the law. The NHS also greatly reduced its recruitment of overseas nurses over the past two years.

Official data will tell us whether work visa numbers continue to decline or somewhat rebound. However, it will be difficult to assess whether domestic skills initiatives are having an impact, or to what extent any future changes result from new government policies.

Figure 2

Another way for overseas workers to move into the UK labour market is through the Graduate Visa, which currently allows international students to work in the country for two or three years after graduation. This became more significant as the number of international students rose sharply and more of them chose to stay after their studies. The government has said it will retain the Graduate route, though the length of the visa will be reduced from 24 to 18 months for non-PhD graduates starting in 2027.

The government has also said it will reduce the exploitation of migrants on work visas, including by removing sponsor licenses from employers who violate employment law. There is evidence that the exploitation of migrants on work visas has been widespread, although it is inherently difficult to quantify its scale or track changes over time.

Pledge 3: Reducing small boat arrivals by cracking down on smuggling networks

The number of people crossing the Channel increased significantly in the 18 months of Labour government. There were around 41,000 arrivals in 2025 – close to the record levels reached in 2022, and 13% more than a year before. In the year ending 30 June 2025, the last period for which data were available, small boat arrivals made up 5% of overall immigration into the UK.

In the last few years, numbers have fluctuated up and down for many reasons, and it is hard to disentangle the causes. The Home Office suggested that a period of unexpectedly calm weather in the Channel in the first half of 2025 led to more crossings; however, there is no evidence that weather conditions affect the number of crossings over longer periods, rather than simply determining their timing in the short run.

While we have official data on how small boat crossings change, it is very difficult to attribute any increase or decrease to specific government policies. Many external factors can influence arrivals more than government policy. These include social and economic developments in countries of origin and developments in smuggling networks.

Figure 3

All parties agree that small boat arrivals should be sharply reduced, but there are major differences between their approaches. The previous Conservative government’s flagship policy on small boats was the Rwanda scheme, which aimed to relocate people who arrived in the UK without authorisation to the East African country.

The Labour government cancelled the Rwanda scheme and promised to reduce crossings by tackling criminal smuggling networks. It established a new Border Security Command with increased staffing and passed the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act in December 2025, giving authorities expanded powers such as the ability to search people and seize their belongings more easily. The government has also increased cooperation with international partners, stationing more officers on the European mainland and signing agreements with origin and transit countries like Iraq and Serbia.

In July 2025, the government signed a ‘one-in, out-out’ returns agreement with France. This allows the UK to return some people who arrive by small boat, in exchange for accepting an equal number of asylum seekers from France. Returns began in September 2025, and 193 people had been returned to France by the end of the year, or around 1.5% of all arrivals during this period. A similar number of people arrived in the UK under the scheme. As with Rwanda, the goal of this scheme is to deter people from crossing the Channel in the first place. A deterrent effect will likely depend on the number of people that are eventually returned – significant deterrence may require a large proportion of people arriving by small boat to be sent back to France.

The Home Secretary also announced significant reforms to the asylum system in November 2025. One of their main goals is to deter asylum seekers from coming to the UK. Instead of being placed on a direct path to permanent settlement as in the present, recognised refugees will be given a temporary status that will have to be renewed every 2.5 years, and face waits of up to 30 years before being granted settlement if they arrived in the country without authorisation. Access to refugee family reunion – already tightened to match the requirements for other residents in September 2025 – will be further restricted. Details remain unclear, including when the new measures will take effect.

Pledge 4: Clearing the asylum backlog

Another concern for the Labour government is the UK’s backlogs of asylum applications, at both the initial decision and appeal stage of the process. Backlogs affect both asylum seekers, who face uncertainty and are not allowed to work, and the government, which has seen its spending on support and accommodation for asylum seekers rise sharply. Several factors explain the large backlogs, including more applications and a lack of tribunal capacity.

The initial decision backlog stood at around 62,000 applications at the end of September 2025 – 28% lower than when Labour entered government in July 2024. The backlog began falling in 2023, though the decline briefly stalled in 2024. This was attributed to the Illegal Migration Act, which prevented people who arrived without authorisation after March 2023 from being granted legal status. In practice, this meant applications submitted after this date were not being processed until the new government repealed that part of the Act in July 2024.

However, an additional appeals backlog has grown rapidly in the courts. By 30 September 2025, around 70,000 asylum applications were waiting for a decision on their appeal – the first time the appeals backlog became larger than the initial decisions one. The number of refusals on asylum applications increased in recent years as a result of more initial decisions and a lower grant rate, driving the growth in appeals. The number of decisions has increased, but has been constrained by a lack of court capacity. Sector organisations have also argued that a shortage of legal aid has led to cases taking longer to hear.

The government has announced plans to accelerate appeals by setting up a new independent appeals body with professional adjudicators instead of judges. It also aims to streamline procedures by accelerating cases deemed to have a low likelihood of success, and ensure all possible claims are dealt with in a single appeal. However, further details and the timeline for implementation remain unclear.

Figure 4

The government has not offered a timeframe for its goal of clearing the asylum backlog, nor a definition of what it means to have cleared it. There will always be at least some pending decisions because of new applications entering the system.

Pledge 5: Ending the use of asylum hotels

Largely as a result of growing backlogs, the number of asylum seekers receiving support from the government has increased sharply in recent years. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work and are entitled to accommodation provided by the Home Office if they are destitute. Housing is normally provided in dispersed accommodation units secured on the private housing market around the UK through several contract providers. However, the large increase in the supported population and housing shortages in the UK have meant that the government did not have enough dispersed accommodation, and instead resorted to more expensive contingency accommodation, mostly hotels.

Labour has promised to end the use of asylum hotels by the end of this Parliament, in 2029. The use of hotels has been highly controversial, leading to high costs for the government and public demonstrations against their use. Spending on hotels reached £2.1bn in the 2024/25 fiscal year, down from £3bn the year before. The government announced plans to house more asylum seekers in military barracks in October 2025, beginning with 900 places across two sites. However, no final decision to go ahead with the plans had been made by the end of the year. Asylum seekers are already housed on two former military sites under a policy started by the previous government, though the NAO has previously raised concerns about the high cost of such schemes, at least in the short run.

At the end of September 2025, around 36,000 asylum seekers were living in hotels. That was 23% higher than when Labour took office at the middle of 2024. In total, around 106,000 people were receiving some form of asylum support from the Home Office.

Figure 5

Pledge 6: Increasing returns

Labour has pledged to remove more people who have no legal status in the UK. Total returns fell sharply during the 2010s, though increases since 2020 have mostly reversed this decline. Around 36,500 people were returned from the UK in the year ending 30 September 2025 – 11% more than a year before. This took returns to the highest level since 2017, but still below the level of the early 2010s.

It is difficult to know what a ‘high’ or ‘low’ number of removals is. The size of the unauthorised population is not known, and there are official statistics on only one sub-group: refused asylum seekers. As a result, we do not know what share of people without legal status are removed, go on to receive legal residence rights, or remain in the UK without status.

It is not clear exactly why returns declined in the 2010s before partly recovering since. Several factors are likely to have played a role, including increased legal challenges, lower budgets for enforcement, and fewer people being refused visas in-country. Similarly, the increase in returns is likely to have been at least in part driven by higher resources and increased immigration in recent years, both legal and unauthorised (for more details, see Deportation and removal: what is driving the numbers?).

While returns have increased in the past year, 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. Labour has redeployed staff to a returns unit, maintained Conservative plans to increase detention spaces, and promised to set up support programmes in several countries of origin to support the reintegration of returnees. Like the previous government, it has negotiated new return deals. An agreement with Iraq was signed in August 2025, following a deal with France in July 2025 to return some people who arrived by small boat.

In December 2025, new agreements on returns were reached with Namibia and Angola, after the Home Secretary threatened visa sanctions against three countries deemed uncooperative on the return of their nationals from the UK. Powers to impose such sanctions were introduced by the previous government in 2022, though they had never been used before. No deal was reached with the third country – the DRC – which now faces restrictions on the processing of visas for its officials. The impacts of these measures are yet to be seen, but so far they cover a small percentage of refused asylum seekers and other unauthorised migrants.

The government announced further measures to increase returns in November 2025. It says it will resume returns to countries like Syria where they had been paused, begin removing families with children from the UK, and accelerate appeals and further submissions. It will also seek to prioritise removals by limiting human rights and modern slavery claims, though details remain unclear.

Figure 6

The number of returns alone does not tell us everything about how effective government policy is at removing people with no legal status. For example, some types of returns are more cost-effective than others. Voluntary returns are both cheaper and considered more humane than enforced removals.

Returns do not result only from government policy. UK voluntary returns statistics include people who leave with no contact with the authorities (e.g. a person who overstays their visa by a couple of months and then leaves the country of their own accord would be counted as a return). These independent returns made up an average of 40% of all returns from 2018 to 2024.

 

Thanks to David Goodhart for comments on an earlier draft. All errors remain our own.