Starmer promises to reduce migration – can he keep his word?
When the prime minister took to the podium at a Downing Street press briefing this morning, he insisted that “people who like politics will try and make this all about politics.” But the PM’s speech on immigration was anything but apolitical – and he delivered it in the shadow of Nigel Farage’s recent electoral success.
In what is being branded “the biggest shake-up of the immigration system since Brexit,” Keir Starmer vowed to reduce net migration to the UK and upskill the domestic workforce. He said “Make no mistake, this plan means migration will fall, that’s a promise.”
He said: “Since this government came to power, visa applications are down nearly 40 per cent. But now is the time to go further and faster. To assure the British people that the experiment is over.”
Why now? Net migration is already on the wane since June 2023, the Office for National Statistics says, albeit from record highs with 728,000 added to the UK population in the year up to July 2024. This is forecast to decrease over the next few years.
Downing Street is adamant the speech is unrelated to Reform UK’s performance in last week’s council elections, and it’s true that work on the White Paper has been underway for months, but there’s no denying that Farage is making the political weather.
There’s no ignoring Reform UK
One of the measures outlined in the white paper this morning is a higher barrier for entry, with an emphasis on integration. Starmer said: “if people want to come to Britain to start a new life, they must contribute, learn our language and integrate.”
A proposed way of doing this is to instate a tougher English language test for visa applicants and their dependents.
Richard Tice, Reform UK’s deputy leader, took credit for this, telling City AM that “we’ve heard lots of warm words from the Prime Minister, and he’s copying the Reform language on integration, on learning to speak the [English] language.” However, he went on to say that “We want net zero immigration, and that is what the majority of British people want.
“That’s why we did so well in the local elections.”
The Institute for Public Policy Research’s Amreen Qureshi agreed, saying that Labour is drawing from Reform’s “principles of control and contribution cohesion in their strategy.”
This White Paper comes after months of immigration being high on the agenda, though the Prime Minister said little about illegal migration as he focused more on a sustainable reduction in the numbers of legal immigration to Britain.
Qureshi said that Labour’s “headline focus is to drive down net migration, which is politically convenient, but it’s not necessarily a wholesale strategy.”
The White Paper points out that humanitarian migration from countries like Ukraine and Hong Kong has played a part in recent surges in net migration, and allows entry to “a limited pool of UNHCR recognized refugees and displaced people.”
Qureshi said “while the politics of it is about driving net migration down, we have spotted that there are some good bits in the white paper that we do welcome that would help protect some of the more vulnerable people in the immigration [system].” These include “tackling exploitation” and “greater flexibility for visa holders on certain routes.”
Do the immigration changes go far enough?
The Center for Policy Studies’ (CPS) research director Karl Williams says the white paper does not go far enough on salient Reform UK issues like the deportation of foreign offenders, instead, “simply kicking the can down the road until at least the end of the year.”
The government faces a tricky balancing act in seeking to address voter concerns over immigration without causing economic damage by cutting employers’ access to top overseas talent or indeed workers in sectors that rely on foreign labour, such as the care sector.
The Sun reports that the Treasury is already engaged in a “kickback” against the immigration White Paper, as Whitehall orthodoxy holds that migrants are needed to plug UK skill shortages are a net boost to the economy.
Stephen Webb, Head of Home Affairs at Policy Exchange, said that “the Home Office is routinely outgunned by almost every other Government department urging more migration in their areas and the Prime Minister needs to stand his ground and land these changes now – rather than let them be diluted by officials and ministers across Whitehall.”
Just last week, the Lords Science and Technology Committee wrote in a letter to senior government officials: “the UK’s current immigration system, and approach to STEM talent for academia and industry, is ‘an act of national self-harm’ and its visa and immigration policy needs to adapt to recognise global competition for talented individuals in science and technology,” something which Reeves stands by.
MPs and policy wonks across the board agree that getting immigration figures down will need to be met with a commensurate policy to train up UK workers.
Government is considering a route which would restrict employers from sponsoring skilled visas if they are not doing their part in upskilling the workforce in the UK.
Tice, however, is unconvinced: “We’ve got plenty of skills. I’m just not buying that at all. We’ve got 70 million people in this country. It’s a record population.
“We keep being told we’ve got a great university sector. Well, maybe they could do something useful and actually train up people to do decent jobs, proper jobs that the country needs, as opposed to useless sociology-type degrees.”
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch dismissed Starmer’s proposals, claiming the Prime Minister “can’t be trusted” on the issue. She said “Keir Starmer once called all immigration laws racist. So why would anyone believe he actually wants to bring immigration down?”
Immigration ranks consistently high on lists of voters’ concerns, and Qureshi said that while some aspects of this announcement “were in response to what’s happening politically … if the government does want to do a massive shake up of the immigration system, it has to make sure that it’s taking a really measured approach that balances what our economy needs.”
Social care in the crosshairs
One of the new measures proposed includes closing social care visas to new applications from abroad, unless employers can prove having tried and failed to hire domestically first.
The CPS finds that “routes such as the social care visa … are too readily abused.”
According to the White Paper, “exploitation increased as unregulated care companies were allowed to bring in low skilled workers to do jobs that didn’t meet proper standards.”
The IPPR’s associate director Marley Morris says “if the government wants to end visas for care workers from abroad, it will need to improve wages and conditions for carers to avoid exacerbating the current staffing crisis.”
The free market Adam Smith Institute’s director of public affairs, Maxwell Marlow, said: “tackling the UK’s long-standing productivity challenges will require more than just curbing migration. A serious commitment to resolving the housing crisis and accelerating the adoption of automation, particularly in labour-intensive sectors like care and construction, is essential.”
After a period in which net migration to the UK reached record highs under successive Conservative leaders, Labour will be looking for a political dividend from the changes announced by the Prime Minister. However, the lesson from the UK’s long and contentious debate over immigration is that if voters don’t see – and feel – change in the years ahead, Labour could be facing a major political problem by the time of the next election.