How did the Tories increase migration following Brexit?

The name of this feature is “Politics Explained”, but there are some subjects that are so hard to explain that we could rename it, just for one day, to “How Did That Happen?”

- JOHN RENTOUL

How was it possible, given that the British people overwhelmingly want less immigration, and voted to leave the European Union partly for that reason, that the British government responded to having the freedom to set its own immigration policy, granted by Brexit, by relaxing controls so that net immigration tripled?

The figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) yesterday estimated net immigration in the year to June 2024 – the last year for which the Conservative government was responsible – to be 728,000.

Isn’t that higher than the previous figure?

Yes, the last figure published by the ONS was 685,000 for the year to December 2023 (these estimates are made every six months, so the annual figure is updated by half a year each time). Everyone was expecting the figure to fall, because, very late in the day, the Conservative government changed the rules to restrict immigration.

And immigration did fall, but it turns out that it had been running at a higher level than the ONS realised, so that 685,000 figure has now been revised up to 866,000. And the figure for the year to June 2023, to which the latest figure should be compared, has been revised from the previous estimate of 740,000 up to 906,000.