Tom Edgington
BBC News

At Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer clashed over the government’s migrant worker visa scheme.

Most people wanting to work in the UK have to apply for a visa through a points-based system, external (PBS).

A points system was first adopted by the Labour government in 2008 and applied to migrants from non-EU countries. It was then overhauled by the Conservatives after the Brexit vote.

The current PBS - which now covers EU and non-EU migrants - was launched at the end of 2020.

To qualify for a skilled worker visa, at least 70 points are required. Attributes such as English language skills and qualifications earn points towards that total. Points would also be awarded if an applicant's job pays at least £25,600 a year.

There are some exceptions. Certain jobs listed on the “shortage occupation list” have a lower salary threshold - making it easier for applicants to gain the required points.

This allows employers to fill vacancies more easily. If granted, the visa lasts up to five years before it needs renewing.

Read more about the system here.

Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick earlier told the House of Commons that net migration to the United Kingdom was "far too high”, but today's figures, he said, “indicate that net migration has flatlined since [June 2022]”.

The “particularly high figures” published today “are in large part due to temporary and exceptional factors such as the UK’s Ukraine and Hong Kong BNO schemes… These schemes command broad support from the British public and we were right to introduce them.”

He added the government remained committed to "reducing overall net migration to sustainable levels".

He also said Labour “feigns interest in cutting net migration” and that “nobody is buying it”.

Earlier in the Commons, Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper asked an Urgent Question of Home Secretary Suella Braverman on today's immigration figures.

The government's Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick made a statement to the Commons instead, pledging to reduce net migration to "sustainable levels".

Cooper criticised the government's record on immigration, asking: "Where is the home secretary who is in charge of these policies?"

Image source, .

For the first time, the official statistics have included the number of asylum seekers who have come to the UK in recent years, which means we can get an idea of the scale of the different types of migration.

The Office for National Statistics says, external 76,000 people applied for asylum in the UK in 2022, an increase from 53,000 in 2021.

That number doesn’t include everybody who arrived in small boats, but the Home Office estimates that about 90% of people who arrive that way go on to seek asylum.

To put that figure into context, asylum seekers made up about 8% of immigration into the UK from outside the EU.

Not a comfortable position for Sunakpublished at 11:11 British Summer Time 25 May 2023

11:11 BST 25 May 2023

David Wallace Lockhart
Political correspondent

Rishi Sunak may not have been the prime minister when the 2019 Conservative manifesto was written, but he was elected as an MP on it.

And it said that under the Conservatives "overall [migration] numbers will come down".

So, presiding over record numbers is not a comfortable position for him to be in.

There is context to these figures that he's keen to point out. For example, the war in Ukraine and unrest in Hong Kong has led to new humanitarian schemes that have inflated the numbers.

But the UK is still bringing in hundreds of thousands of people from other countries to fill job vacancies. This is where the prime minister faces political pressure (from both his own party and opposition figures).

The concern is there's little incentive for employers to train up UK citizens when the option of importing workers from abroad is available to them.

The government is adamant that net migration will come down. What they're more vague about is the timescale.

And with a general election looming next year, Rishi Sunak may well go to the polls having to concede that his party has completely failed on that 2019 manifesto commitment to bring the numbers down.

Callum May
BBC News

Afghans made up almost a quarter of "small boat" arrivals to the UK in the first three months of the year, new figures show.

Data published by the Home Office has revealed there were 898 Afghans who crossed in small boats to the Kent coast, out of a total of 3,793.

The second biggest nationality in the figures was Indians - 670 made the crossing.

Iranians, Iraqis and Syrians were the next biggest nationalities.

But the flow of Albanians across the channel has almost stopped, according to the data. After more than 12,000 arrived in 2022, only 28 made the crossing between January and March this year.

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has just spoken in the Commons about the migration figures, calling them “extraordinary”.

Cooper said the government’s doubling of work visas since the pandemic “shows the Conservatives have no plan and no grip on immigration”.

She questioned why the asylum backlog was at a record high and how net migration could be “more than twice the level that ministers were aiming for”.

Cooper then took aim at Home Secretary Suella Braverman, asking where she was today and if she had gone to ground: “What is the point of her," she asked.

In an earlier statement, Cooper said “Labour will put skills and fairness at the heart of the immigration system.”

Rahul in Coventry has been recruiting for a specialist engineering position for 18 months and says "about 95%" of all applicants have been from abroad.

He tells 5 Live's Nicky Campbell there's an "acute shortage" of specialist skills in engineering in the UK.

"Universities and migration, they've got to work hand in hand," he says, adding he doesn't believe university courses are well enough "aligned with what the industry actually needs".

"You can see companies like Jaguar, Land Rover and Ford, they've got people who are actually going abroad to countries like India or Germany for... engineering expertise or technical expertise."

Callum May
BBC News

The number of people who were returned to foreign countries under immigration rules has fallen to a new low.

Home Office figures show 37,948 people were removed from the UK in 2022.

The total is below pre-pandemic levels - and the lowest number on record, with the exception of the pandemic years.

The total represents about half the number recorded in 2009, when 71,000 were removed.

Image source, PA

Some reaction now from UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who says the net migration figures are "too high" - but denies they are out of control.

"Numbers are too high, it's as simple as that, and I want to bring them down," he tells ITV's This Morning programme.

Asked whether immigration was out of control, he adds: "Well, no, I think the numbers are just too high."

"A series of unprecedented world events throughout 2022 and the lifting of restrictions following Covid led to record levels of international immigration to the UK," says Jay Lindop, deputy director of the Centre for International Migration - the group that helped compile the figures for the Office for National Statistics.

"The main driver of the increase was people coming to the UK from non-EU countries for work, study and for humanitarian purposes, including those arriving from Ukraine and Hong Kong."

She adds: "There are some signs the underlying drivers behind these high levels of migration are changing. As lockdown restrictions were lifted in 2021, we saw a sharp increase in students arriving.

"Recent data suggests that those arriving in 2021 are now leaving the country, with the overall share of non-EU immigration for students falling in 2022.

"In contrast, those arriving on humanitarian routes increased over the 12 months. Evidence also suggests immigration has slowed in recent months, potentially demonstrating the temporary nature of these events."

Robert Cuffe
Head of statistics

Migration added just over 600,000 people to the UK’s population in 2022 – that’s about 118,000 more than were added in 2021 and nearly double the pre-pandemic levels.

But it has levelled off in recent quarters - there hasn’t been much of an increase in the second half of the year.

Overall, more people from the European Union are leaving than are arriving - EU migration took 51,000 people out of the UK population last year (not much changed compared with 2021).

Migration from outside the EU added 662,000 people to the UK’s population - an increase of 164,000 on the year before.

The main reasons identified by the ONS for the increase in migration from outside the EU are work and humanitarian routes.

About 114,000 Ukrainian nationals arrived in the UK last year on the various Ukraine schemes, and about 52,000 from Hong Kong on special visas.

The number of work-related arrivals from outside the EU nearly doubled compared with 2021 (235,000 versus 137,000 the year before).

Callum May
BBC News

The number of asylum seekers waiting for a decision on whether they can stay in the UK as refugees has risen by 6,500, according to figures published this morning.

Home Office data shows at the end of March this year the backlog stood at 172,758 - an increase from the previous quarter.

And 128,812 of these asylum seekers have been waiting longer than six months for their claims to be decided. This number is up by nearly 20,000.

The prime minister has promised to “eradicate” much of the backlog by the end of this year.

Image source, .

We reported earlier that asylum seekers were not included in today's net migration figures.

While that used to be the case, the ONS has said this morning that asylum seekers are included in this year's figures.

It says around one in 12 non-EU migrants came via this route.

Image source, .

Dr Peter Walsh from Oxford University’s Migration Observatory , externaltold BBC Breakfast earlier that government targets on migration in recent years were always going to be difficult to meet.

This is because “the UK is a popular destination for students, for workers”, he said.

In the past decade, the UK's annual average migration figure has been between a quarter of a million and 350,000 people, he said.

Walsh continues by saying he believes “future governments will be wary” of migration targets and, in the case of current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, “wary of making a specific commitment”.

Robert Cuffe
Head of statistics

The combination of international conflict and a government push to increase the number of foreign students have led to record numbers of arrivals in the country.

Some 1.2 million people arrived in the UK last year intending to stay for a year or more (not much up on the year-to-June figure of 1.1 million but sharply up on, for example, 2019’s figure of 271,000).

When you strip out the number who emigrated (557,000), migration added 606,000 to the UK population.

That’s sharply up on recent levels.

Census figures for England and Wales showed that migration added an average of 200,000 people a year to their population between 2011 and 2021 (compared with 150,000 a year due to births outpacing deaths).

The official figures have just dropped - net migration added 606,000 people to the UK’s population in 2022, the highest number on record.

Stay with us as we unpack the new migration data and bring you the latest reaction and analysis.

Click on the Play icon at the top of this page to watch the latest BBC News coverage from 09:30 BST on the migration figures.

If you haven't got time to watch, we'll bring you all the latest analysis and video clips right here, so stay with us.

When we last reported on net migration seven months ago, the figure was 504,000 people, which was the the highest figure ever recorded then.

The data was recorded for the 12 months until June 2022, so it's not a direct comparison to what we will learn today.

But it gives you an idea of the overall trend of net migration.

You can read more here.