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Net migration to the UK almost halved in 2024 as tougher visa rules took effect, in figures that could reduce pressure on Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government over the politically charged issue.
The Office for National Statistics said net migration was 431,000 last year, down from 860,000 in 2023, with fewer people arriving on work and study visas and higher emigration by students who came after the pandemic.
The drop in arrivals reflects tougher rules brought in at the end of 2023 under the previous Conservative government, including a ban on care workers and international students bringing family to the UK and higher salary requirements for skilled workers.
The data released on Thursday comes as Starmer seeks to show he has a firm grip on immigration in order to fend off Nigel Farage’s rightwing populist Reform UK party.
Sunder Katwala, director of the British Future think-tank, said the significant fall in net migration gave Starmer “an opportunity to take a more pragmatic approach, managing the pressures and keeping the gains of immigration — rather than competing in a political auction over which party can pretend to eliminate it”.
The ONS said immigration for work from outside the EU fell 49 per cent in 2024, while arrivals to study at UK universities fell 17 per cent — with much sharper drops in family members accompanying students and workers.
This reduced long-term immigration — people who stay in the UK longer than 12 months — to 948,000 in 2024, down by almost a third from a revised estimate of 1.326mn for 2023. The ONS said this was the first time the number of arrivals had dropped below 1mn since March 2022.
Long-term emigration was estimated at 517,000, up 11 per cent from the previous year to levels last seen in 2017.
Starmer’s government last week set out sweeping reforms intended to cut immigration further, including the closure of the care visa route, a phasing out of other lower skilled work visas, tougher language requirements and a longer route to win settlement in the UK.
The Home Office said these changes could cut the number of visa applications by about 100,000 per year, although it did not give an estimate for the impact on net migration, which is likely to be smaller.
Visa figures published separately by the Home Office on Thursday show the number of people seeking to come to the UK continued falling at the start of 2025, even before the announcement of further curbs.
In the year to March, applications for work visas fell 39 per cent from the previous year to 192,110. As well as a steep drop in care visas, this reflected a 23 per cent drop in applications for skilled worker visas, driven by lower demand from the hospitality and IT sectors.
Analysts say that once the new rules are in place, net migration could plausibly drop below the levels currently factored into fiscal forecasts.
The Office for Budget Responsibility based its most recent forecasts on an assumption that annual net migration will settle at about 340,000.
Madeleine Sumption, director of Oxford university’s Migration Observatory, said the economic impact of the drop in net migration was “actually likely to be relatively small”. This was because the groups driving the decline, such as study and work dependants, were “neither the highest skilled, highest-paid migrants who make substantial contributions to tax revenues, nor the most disadvantaged groups that require substantial support”.
But Jonathan Portes, professor at King’s College London, said a reduction of 100,000 in net migration would push up the budget deficit by about £7bn a year by the end of the decade — more than offsetting the savings the government plans to make through cuts to health-related benefits.
Although the drop in immigration would be politically welcome, it threw “into sharp relief the tension between migration reductions and the economic growth necessary to . . . finance better public services”, he said.
Data showing a sharp rise in the number of people claiming asylum in the UK will also complicate the picture for Starmer, who has vowed to slash small boat crossings to the UK by “smashing the gangs” that transport people across the channel.
In the year to March 2025, 109,000 people claimed asylum, 17 per cent higher than the same period a year earlier and higher than the previous peak recorded in 2002.
There was a marked increase in the number of asylum applications made by Pakistani nationals, up by nearly 60 per cent to 11,000. While Afghans still represented the second-largest nationality of applicants, the numbers fell 17 per cent to 8,000.
Less than half of asylum applications were granted in the year to March 2025, however, down from 61 per cent in the previous year.
