Labour has halved UK net migration. The data Reform UK won't quote

[UknownM]

ONS published in November 2025 had UK net migration at 204,000 in the year ending June 2025 — down 78% from the 2023 peak of around 906,000. The fall came under Labour's May 2025 Immigration White Paper: care worker visa route closed to overseas applicants from July 2025, Skilled Worker skills threshold raised to degree level, English language requirements tightened.
The piece walks the numbers + what each policy lever has actually done + the implication for Reform UK's anti-migration campaigning given Labour's already substantially reformed the system. Found this clear: https://trendingsheet.com/article/how-labour-halved-the-boriswave-uk-net-migration-math-reform-uk-2025

I’ve reached the stage where I look at the figures they realise and then look at what’s not said because that’s the key. There’s always something left out or bundled together to make them give the message the government wants them to. They also seem to purposely not collect some data so the public will never know eg crime by ethnicity or immigration status. Were told NHS wait list are down but how much if this is fudged/manipulated eg being actively removed from lists, having died as they waited so long, going private (paid for by the NHS) etc.

The public want to see action and change, not more of the same with fudging.

With immigration they want to see something done about illegal immigrants, they want to see that the ability for an immigrant to bring lots of relatives in who are generally a burden (esp when said immigrant is earning nmw) is stopped. They want to see a stop to benefits paid for having second (or more) wives, cousin marriage etc etc.

I would like to see what they have in Oz, no job is filled unless the organisation can prove that is no-one suitable British citizen. Stop importing people, use and train up what we have and pay them well.

The "Dublin returns at scale" framing was always more aspiration than mechanism. The other piece worth adding: the UK was outside the 2015 EU emergency relocation quotas because of the JHA opt-out under Protocol 21. So the counterfactual where Britain stayed in and got "flooded" by mandatory allocations does not really hold either. Both ends of the populist framing collapse on the detail. Which is roughly the point of your post.
On the article scope: it is about regular net migration via work and study routes, not small boats. Different statistical series, different policy levers, different debate.

Worth taking the points one at a time, because some of them rest on facts that have changed or are actually published.

On data being deliberately not collected: crime by ethnicity is published by the Ministry of Justice in the Race and the Criminal Justice System statistics, updated annually. Immigration status of offenders is patchier. So the "they won't tell us" picture is half-right.

On benefits for polygamous marriages: Polygamous marriages contracted in the UK are void. The "benefits for second wives" line is a long-running myth that does not match how the benefits rules actually work.

On cousin marriage: there is no benefits payment tied to cousin marriage. It is legal but not subsidised. That framing tracks racialised assumptions more than actual benefits rules.

On low-paid migrants bringing dependents: that picture mostly describes the pre-April-2024 system. The Skilled Worker salary threshold rose to £38,700 last year, and dependent visas for care workers were restricted in March 2024. The lever you describe has already moved, and the article touches on why net migration is now falling.

On a labour market test: UK had the Resident Labour Market Test until 2020. The Johnson government abolished it when it brought in the points-based system. Restoring something like it would be a return to recent UK practice, not a new Australian import.

On NHS waiting lists: the "removed from lists" concern is partly real. NHS does remove patients who decline two appointments without rebooking. But the headline wait-time movements can be cross-checked against the NHS England monthly RTT data, which is published in granular form.

On the broader instinct that you want harder numbers and clearer trade-offs from government, that is reasonable. Some of the fixes are available in the published tables if you know where to look. Some are genuine collection gaps. The myths in circulation make it harder to tell which is which.

Anecdotally, I've noticed that our local Indian and Chinese restaurants all have UK-born staff now, rather than overseas-born waitstaff. This is since restaurant staff were taken off the shortage occupation list.

The shortage occupation list makes interesting reading: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/skilled-worker-visa-temporary-shortage-list/skilled-worker-visa-temporary-shortage-list

The government need to shout louder. The media in this country will never say anything positive about them. They need a rottweiler like Alistair Campbell to drown out the pro-Reform press.

@UknownM

I agree with that. We still were not returning many to any other country under Dublin either, when you consider the scale. If we were still in the EU, which I would have preferred, I don’t think it is mega credible to claim that we would be returning masses of people. We’d also be in a situation in which anyone granted citizenship of another EU country (eg recent relatively recent migrants to scandi countries) could come here (in practice, we did not require people to leave if they did not have a job within 3 months).

I didn’t mean that we could be forced to have quotas legally under the EU system as it was.

Rather, what I meant is that what is legally written down is all very well, but what really matters is political reality.

The reality of a migrant crisis and the need to cooperate with our fellow EU countries would not really have allowed us to deport masses of EU migrants to them. It just would not have happened - for the same reason that it is not currently facilitating mass relocation of migrants back to the first port of entry from Germany or France. This is precisely why Germany has been suspending Schengen.

Depending on which government was in power, if we hadn’t done Brexit it was conceivable that a government might decide to accept a new EU deal with a set of quotas on migration in return for more “order”, or for any other reason. It’s certainly along the lines of something that Rory Stewart is advocating now (ie countries being forced to take their fair share). And Keir Starmer is in that ilk.

It is a difficult issue and it really irritates me to see well meaning liberal people (with whom I actually agree about lots of things) telling people that Dublin was something that would have solved lots of the issues if only people didn’t vote for Brexit.

(But yes, I agree that U.K. migration has halved. Part of this is the measures taken under the Rishi sunak government. If Shabana Mahmood’s reforms go through, some of the fiscal impact of the Boriswave, as that cohort will soon be entitled to state support, will also be negated. The wider Labour Party doesn’t actually believe in limiting migration, or worries that it is racist, and would have to acknowledge that some of the fall is a Tory fall, so the reality is that it doesn’t brag about it).

Reform voters will simply not believe the stats (we see that here all the time) and Labour will further alienate their base and drive them to the Greens if they broadcast how aggressive they have been on immigration. It's a lose-lose for them.

Exactly!

Net migration is a misleading statistic and not all that important.

You can reduce net migration if you have more people leaving the country. The problem is those that leave are usually pay a high amount of tax or are well educated and taking employment abroad whereas those many of those coming in pay little or no tax but instead cost the tax payer money through handouts.

We need to stop having net migration published and instead seperately report the number of people leaving the country and the number of people coming in.

Those details are published, including the nationalities of the arrivals and leavers.

Lets be honest, who would come to the UK if they were incredibly bright, well educated, high earning and from a comparable developed country?

"The problem is those that leave are usually pay a high amount of tax or are well educated and taking employment abroad"

A link to the ONS stats supporting this statement would be useful. My understanding was the majority of emigrants are students and non-EU migrants returning to their countries of origin, along with a good chunk of British retirees seeking sunnier climes.

Visit any tech or FSI firm in London and you will find people from all over the world. I can assure you they are not on minimum wage.

Agree re the Dublin agreement.

When it comes to asylum, there is really only 2 things to do. Change countries so they are safe, or grant asylum to protect the people.

Returning folk to the last safe country sounds good, But it can't really work because then everyone ends up piled up in the first safe country. That's not fair, so then they really have to be distributed to safe countries.

And if nobody was making it to the UK, by whatever means, to claim asylum, then all those countries closest to danger countries would soon be saying.... ahem, you gotta help us out here.

Sunlit uplands and 350mil a week...

No way should more people be voting Green while they have a problem with antisemitism.

Even the former Green leader Caroline Lucas has called for the party to take immediate action against candidates who have made antisemitic comments or posts, following a series of cases that came to light before the local elections.

Under the Greens’ highly decentralised system, local parties have considerable power, including over who they select as candidates. The party argues this can make it slower to suspend candidates than is often the case for other parties.

They need to adjust this system as well as significantly strengthen their vetting procedures ASAP.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/05/greens-must-take-immediate-action-against-antisemitism-in-party-says-lucas

This nails it. Most British people are quite happy to have skilled, English speaking immigrants who share British values come to UK. They are happy to see immigrants who, when looked at WITH any family members they bring, will be net contributors to the economy or who are fulfilling vital roles that British people can not do.

What they do not want is people who build their own parallel societies within the UK, people who make no effort to integrate, people who reject British values and people who use up state resources (health care etc) while never having contributed themselves. They particularly do not want unskilled, young, single men who have entered the country illegally and harass, sexually assault, rape and murder.

And they do not want to see highly skilled British people leaving the country because the tax burden has become too high.

This is not difficult and only leftists with an agenda insist on conflating the different groups.

This nails it.