Economics viewpoint Honest debate needed on fall in net migration

Keir Starmer's response to the 69% fall in net migration revealed in official figures last week was to remark: "That's a step in the right direction.

- Heather Stewart Economics editor

Describing a reduction of more than two-thirds of any indicator in a single year as a "step" would be a creative use of statistics, putting it kindly. But on this most polarising of topics, and for the prime minister, whose job it is to shape public opinion, not cower before it, it was inexcusable.

Starmer's insouciance about the collapse in numbers - from 649,000 last year to 204,000 in the year to June - was just the latest example of how detached from reality political debate about migration has become.

Chairing a panel discussion on this issue at the Bristol festival of economics this month, I was struck by two points made by Brian Bell, the chair of the independent Migration Advisory Committee.

First, contrary to Starmer's claim that Boris Johnson had deliberately engaged in a "one-nation experiment in open borders", Bell described the extraordinary increase in net migration that followed Brexit and the Covid pandemic as "an accident".