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UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has announced a migration crackdown to “finally honour” the Brexiter promise to “take back control”, warning that without action Britain risked becoming “an island of strangers”.
In sweeping reforms to the immigration system, migrants to the UK will need to spend a decade in the country before applying to settle unless they can show “a real and lasting contribution to the economy and society”.
The proposal to end automatic settlement after five years is part of planned curbs on legal migration that will also heavily restrict employers’ ability to hire overseas workers for lower-skilled roles.
The immigration white paper also set out plans to abolish the visa route for social care workers, which has been a major driver of migration to Britain in recent years, and increase the qualification threshold for skilled worker visas to graduate level.
Starmer told a Downing Street press conference on Monday that Britain had seen a “one-nation experiment in open borders” under the last Conservative government, adding: “That’s not control, that’s chaos.”
The prime minister said his proposed changes, described by the Conservatives as too timid, would end a “squalid chapter for our politics, our economy and our country” and would encourage the training and hiring of UK workers.
Starmer did not set a target for cuts in migration, and has rejected a Tory proposal of an annual cap, but said: “I’m promising it will fall significantly.”
According to government calculations, the suite of measures will reduce the number of people arriving in the UK by 98,000 per year, with a range of between 82,000 and 113,000.
This would mean that net migration in 2029-30 would fall to about 240,000, down from the Office for Budget Responsibility’s current forecast of 340,000.
One Home Office official stressed the estimates should not be used to work out Starmer’s overall target for net migration, as there were other measures being rolled out to reduce flows that “could reduce net migration further”.
Net migration reached a peak of 906,000 in the year to June 2023 under the last Tory government, but started falling after former prime minister Rishi Sunak’s administration cracked down on visas for families and dependants, and increased the salary threshold for many occupations.
Starmer’s reforms and tough rhetoric come after Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK party scored major successes in English local elections this month, opening up a big lead in national opinion polls.
The prime minister said on Monday he was not making the changes for political reasons but because “it is fair, and because it is what I believe in”.
The white paper also set out plans to increase the salary threshold for all visa holders seeking to bring over dependants, and raise English language requirements for applicants and dependants.
Under pressure from Reform and the Conservatives to go further, the prime minister added that he would be prepared to take additional steps to reduce immigration, if needed. “Mark my words, we will,” he said.
He batted away suggestions that the crackdown would further undermine Britain’s sluggish growth rate, leaving employers with gaping labour shortages and care homes struggling to find staff.
“The theory that higher migration numbers necessarily leads to higher growth has been tested in the last four years,” he said, arguing that migration had quadrupled but the economy had stagnated.
That claim is likely to be disputed by economists and employers, but Starmer insisted: “That link doesn’t hold on that evidence.”
