Migration Watch UK responds to net migration figures

November 28, 2024

Migration Watch Chairman Alp Mehmet said:

Net migration of 728,000, while lower than it was in 2023, is still far too high and unsustainable. Moreover, the modest fall has little to do with anything that Sir Keir Starmer and his Home Secretary have done. It is now essential that net migration is quickly reduced as close as possible to zero, if we are to avoid further tensions in the housing sector, the NHS and other services already in crisis. Meanwhile, the changing nature of society that inevitably follows rapid mass immigration will put the cohesion we have long enjoyed at ever greater risk.

Note to Editors

• Net migration was 728,000 in YE June 2024, but revised data from the ONS shows it hit 906,000 the previous year. So it fell 20% but it is still running at almost triple the level we saw pre-Brexit.
• The ONS expect net migration to level off at 315,000 from 2028, but we think that is unlikely while current immigration rules remain in place. However, even at this level, with the children to be born to migrants, our population is projected to grow by a further 9 million within the next 25 years.
• Annual net migration of 600,000 (plus children born to migrants) will lead to a projected growth of 20 million in the same time frame. Nearly all of the population increase will be due to immigration, thus bringing closer the time when the present majority element of the population will become the minority.
• While the government has acknowledged that immigration is at unsustainable levels, it has no plan to reduce it and refuses to say what it should be reduced to. They won’t contemplate a cap, which we believe essential, if net migration is to come down from its present catastrophic levels.