The UK needs a migration policy that serves the needs of the country, everyone in it, and people who want to come here. Is that too much to ask for? Or would our politicians prefer to dig-whistle instead?
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
We need a realistic migration policy in the UK, and we are a very long way from having it. What is more, what Labour has just announced is undoubtedly going to make things worse.
Let's stand back a bit and think about migration in a rational, sensible, sane, organised, economic and social fashion, because that is not what our politicians seem willing to do.
First of all, let's just look at the data that exists on migration, which is being used by so many of those politicians to fuel their own hype, to promote their own cause, and to create distress in society, wholly unnecessarily.
We are seeing more migration into the UK at present. This is an undoubted fact.
A tiny proportion of the whole number of people arriving in the UK, maybe 5% or so, arrive on those small boats, which the television channels seem so keen to put on our screens at present. In practice, they are a tiny part of the migration issue.
The reason why we have so much more migration at present is because, quite reasonably, the UK government put in place two schemes that allow large numbers of people to arrive in the UK, and have 📍 done so since 2020.
One is the scheme with regard to Ukrainians who are seeking to come here because this is a safe country, and their own is not.
And the other is the scheme put in place for the people from Hong Kong who need to leave that country because of the threat they live under from the Chinese Republic, which is destroying democracy, and freedom, and human rights in Hong Kong.
Those two issues, Ukraine and Hong Kong, have fueled the vast majority of the increase in migration into the UK. Well, that fact plus the enormous success of UK universities in selling their courses to overseas students.
These are the reasons why we have more migration in the UK. Small boats hardly come into it, and yet they are being used promote fear about the creation of inequality and distress in this country when in practice that is very hard to evidence in most places in the UK as a whole, and in very many parts of the country, frankly we need more migrants, as Scotland openly acknowledges.
So we are living in a world where there is distorted data, and what is more, that data is almost certainly unreliable. We might know about the number of people coming into the UK. We are not nearly so good about knowing about the number of people who leave the UK, including people who are leaving to the EU and UK people - that is UK passport holders - leaving to live elsewhere, and of course those who came in as migrants and who leave, but who don't necessarily need to declare the fact.
So, the data that we are looking at is bad. And until we actually have some honesty about this data and we break the figures down to show why we had such a large change in 2020, which wasn't all down to the consequences of Brexit, although some of it was, then we can't have an informed debate on this issue in the UK. We need to have that data because we need to take the heat out of this issue, even though that is not what our politicians want, because they love that heat, because they think they can compete on this issue which does not require them to actually think very much, because it's all about visceral hatred.
Then we need to talk about the consequences of a failure to have sufficient people coming into the UK. We have some real problems in the UK, and we need to consider how to address those as part of a migration policy.
Take, for example, the problems that we have in social care. We have a social care crisis in the UK.
We have an NHS crisis as a consequence of having a social care crisis, because the NHS is not able to discharge people sufficiently quickly from hospitals these days precisely because there isn't the social care available for the people to be looked after when they no longer need hospital care, but cannot as yet be released back to their homes because they, for example, just cannot look after themselves, or get to the toilet without assistance. And that is what social care helps them with.
But, right now, we have too few social care facilities in the UK, and we have too few people available to work in social care homes. There are 131,000 vacancies in social care at the time that we're making this video. That is some indication of the shortage of available skills that exists in this sector, but despite that, there are low wages. That is because this is traditionally female labour, and traditional female labour has always been underpriced in the UK, and that remains the case, discriminatory as it is, and the government is doing nothing to correct that.
There is also massive underfunding of social care. Very large numbers of people who are in social care are at least partly funded by local authorities in the UK, and although the government is saying that it will not now let social care facilities hire people from overseas, it is doing nothing to increase the wages in the sector by providing additional funding to ensure that those higher wages that people who are normally resident in the UK want, can be paid to provide the services that people need.
In other words, the government is not joining up its thinking.
It's punishing social care.
It's going to punish the people who need social care.
It's going to make the reform of the NHS very much harder.
It's going to make waiting lists longer, and all of that because it won't provide money for people working in social care, and nor will it train them in this country.
And this problem is only going to get worse. The demographics of this country guarantee that the amount of social care that we will need is going to rise.
At present, there is a dependency ratio, that is, the ratio of people over the age of 65 to the number of people aged between 16 and 65, of around 30. That means there are 30 people of retirement age for every 100 people who are of working age, but that figure is going to rise. It's predicted to rise to at least 35 by 2045. And it could go higher still.
The point is there is, in this case, a disaster in the making in social care, because if we remove the source of labour for social care, we not only make it harder to secure it, but we also basically bankrupt local authorities.
We guarantee that people will be left without care.
We will create longer backlogs inside the NHS.
We will therefore deny people the healthcare they need.
Everything goes wrong if we don't have a joined-up policy for migration. And migration is the thing that has kept this equation going to date. How the government now thinks the equation will work without inward migration, I don't know. They're living in cloud-cuckoo land, because they think it will.
And there's another area where they're also living in cloud-cuckoo land, and that's with regard to universities. Universities have, in response to government targets and incentives, massively expanded their offering of postgraduate courses, in particular, to attract overseas students to the UK.
That programme has been enormously successful.
It has subsidised the cost of UK students going to university, because, on average, there is a loss of £2,500 per year per undergraduate student in a UK university if they are paying UK based tuition fees, but that is made up for by the fees paid by overseas students who pay over the odds for their courses and have been willing to do so. But, the government wishes to cut the number of overseas students coming to the UK by attaching significantly more onerous conditions to their visas, and as a consequence, the number of those students is collapsing.
It is literally tumbling right now as we record. I suspect that there will be many fewer overseas students starting courses in September and October, this coming year, 2025, than there were even last year, and massively fewer than in 2023.
The whole of the university sector is at risk as a consequence, because some universities are utterly dependent upon this income to survive and have geared their whole finances around it. As a consequence, we are going to see some universities fail. That is now beyond any doubt at all. Unless the government changes its strategy, universities will go bust.
The consequences for those who work for them will be enormous.
The consequence for the students who are at them will be enormous because they may not be able to finish their courses. There is, at present, no plan in place to ensure that they will be able to get transferred to other universities.
And the consequences for the towns and cities that host these universities is catastrophic.
Round, then, this is a disastrous policy led by government purely to tackle the hype around student migration figures, which is wholly unnecessary because as a matter of fact, the vast majority of students do go back to their home countries once they've finished their courses, and if they stay, it's only to add value to our economy whilst they're being trained.
And it's not just those two sectors that are suffering, of course. Others are as well. We have a shortage of skilled labour in this country, but a great deal of the labour that we are short of is not graduate labour. We are short of builders. We are short of all forms of artisan worker. Traditionally, the demand for these skills has been met by migrants.
It was the Irish who built so many of our houses in the post-war boom.
It was Irish navvies who built our railways, and even our canals before that.
It has always been the migrant who's done that sort of heavy lifting labour, but which is highly skilled, and which we are not training people to do in the UK at present. We have far too few skilled places available to train the number of people that we need to do these jobs.
We have the same problem in the health service. It is not everybody who is a graduate in the health service but, nonetheless, who can undertake useful and valuable jobs within it.
And yet what we hear the government saying is that unless somebody has at least a graduate level skill, they won't get a visa to come into the UK.
It is like we are trying to shoot ourselves in the foot with regard to creating a skill shortage, which is going to undermine every aspect of the government's plan for growth, as well as to improve public services, and they're doing it nonetheless. The focus on graduates within the migration policy that the government is promoting is far too narrow.
As a consequence, we are looking as though we are heading for what I might describe as a coordinated failure.
It's not coordinated in the sense that the government is planning it. It's happening because the government is failing to coordinate its planning around all those areas where failure might happen.
And that is with regard to data, with regard to care, with regard to education, with regard to skills shortages, with regard to infrastructure and with regard to health. Every one of these essential services is at risk because we are planning to reduce the number of migrants into the UK, and make the UK into what Theresa May described as a hostile environment for migrants already here, which is one of the most toxic, noxious and disgusting phrases ever created by a politician. But that's what we're going to get unless the government rethinks its migration policy.
We are heading for economic meltdown because the government is joining the migrant bandwagon.
We require, as a consequence, a coordinated policy for migration. But it's more than that. It's a coordinated policy for those sectors which have relied upon migrants to ensure that they function.
We need more money for care in the UK, because if we don't have more money for care in the UK, there will be no substitution of UK-based workers for migrant based workers. It's as simple and straightforward as that.
We need the training for people to work in this sector and the others that I've mentioned. All those artisanal skills: brick laying, building, carpentry, electricians, plumbing, and all those other things that have always been done by migrant workers.
We need to properly fund our universities so that they cannot fail, and we need to exclude students from migrant figures because they are only here temporarily, and whilst they are here, they massively boost the export sales of this country by bringing foreign currency into it, which is exactly the same as selling goods and services to their countries themselves.
And of course, we need a proper plan for the NHS.
But as it is, none of those things are in place at the moment. The missing link that somehow makes all those systems work is migrant workers. Those workers literally keep our economy going. We could do without them, but only if we put in place a long-term plan to replace them, and we don't put in place short-term measures to repel them from our shores, which is what the government is doing.
If we want to substitute UK workers in these sectors for migrant workers, then we have to plan for it, and the transition will take 10 or more years, in all likelihood, but it could be done. But it can't be done without funding. And it can't be done without planning. And it can't be done without politicians who will talk sense about the reality of what our migrant labour issues are in this country.
Unless they do that, we are in deep trouble. Without an integrated plan for migration, this country is going to be, well, frankly, left high and dry without the labour force it needs, and if that's what Labour wants - and the paradox is in its name - then I am astonished.
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“they are a tiny part of the migration issue.”
I don’t suppose many turn up in Ely? Go and “walk around” some of the communities which have to house them and listen to what the locals have to say. Or you can of course just remain in your bubble, bury your head in the sand and pontificate this kind of dogma.
Politely, Reform is strongest in the areas with fewest migrants.
Communities are most pregressive where there are migrants.
The problem Reform exploit is the fear of migration they create, not the actual lived experience of people living with it.
And for the record, I know a bit about this. I chaired the governors of a school once with 80% English as a second language – and it was a fantastic place.
In other words, what you are saying is totally false.
What I am failing to understand, Richard, is the stipulation that visas will only be granted to those with graduate level skills yet we are constantly being told that our own graduates are having great difficulty in finding graduate level jobs.
This government becomes more unbearable day by day.
This makes no sense at all.
And the graduate employment problem is very real.
Thank you and well said, Richard.
Richard: “A tiny proportion of the whole number of people arriving in the UK, maybe 5% or so, arrive on those small boats, which the television channels seem so keen to put on our screens at present. In practice, they are a tiny part of the migration issue.”
It even made the TF1 evening news in France yesterday. Migrants are crossing from as far west as Dieppe in Normandy to avoid patrols in the Calais area.
In late 2023, my Foreign Office mole, a former colleague, and I dined with her minister. The minister said “the BBC was encouraged, not that it needed much*, to maintain a relentless focus on the boats, so that the much larger numbers coming by other means would be ignored”. Why? The then government “thought that the only future for Britain was as home for armies of cheap labour”. I thought of Blighty as Mexico to America. “Any skilled labour was a bonus”.
*It was implied that many at the BBC, not just the leadership, are Brexiteer, neoliberal, neocon and Zionist.
This is a powerful and urgent analysis of how short-term political positioning on migration is undermining key pillars of the UK’s public services and economy. But rather than only highlighting the scale of the failure, let’s focus on what could be done—compassionately, cost-effectively, and within the UK’s existing legal and economic frameworks.
Separate Humanitarian and Economic Migration in Policy and Debate: We need a political consensus that distinguishes between humanitarian routes (Ukraine, Hong Kong, asylum seekers) and economic migration. The former is a legal and moral obligation under international law; the latter is a domestic economic choice. Mixing the two in public debate only fuels confusion and resentment.
Suggestion: Legislate a two-track migration framework—one humanitarian, one economic—with clearly separated targets, budgets, and public accountability. This would allow each to be judged on its own merits and keep the public discourse honest.
Restore and Expand the Shortage Occupation List: We can acknowledge labour shortages in care, construction, hospitality and transport without “opening the floodgates.” The government already has a legal mechanism: the Shortage Occupation List, which allows easier, lower-cost recruitment from overseas for specific roles.
Suggestion: Expand the list urgently, based on evidence from sector bodies and local authorities, especially to include care workers, bricklayers, HGV drivers and NHS support staff—not just graduates. This is low-cost and already sits within the UK’s points-based immigration system.
Lift Students Out of Net Migration Targets: Students are not migrants in any practical or permanent sense. Their inclusion in the numbers distorts the debate and risks destroying a higher education sector that brings in billions in exports.
Suggestion: Remove international students from the net migration target. This does not require new legislation—only a change in how the Office for National Statistics classifies migration. Australia and Canada already do this. Universities should also be supported to create clearer pathways into post-study work where it meets UK economic needs.
Tie Migration Reform to Domestic Workforce Investment: We mustn’t pretend we can simply “replace” migrant workers overnight. But we can start building a longer-term strategy that includes UK workers—if we invest now.
Suggestion: Link any tightening of work visa routes to binding public commitments on:
Pay uplifts for social care and other essential services.
Expansion of vocational training and apprenticeships.
Grants to local authorities to build the care workforce.
This would cost money—but the alternative (NHS backlogs, failed universities, collapsed social care) is far costlier in economic and human terms.
Create a National Migration and Skills Council: Migration policy currently lacks joined-up thinking. It pits departments against each other (Home Office vs DfE vs DHSC) and creates chaotic policy outcomes.
Suggestion: Establish a statutory, independent Migration and Skills Council, similar to the Low Pay Commission, with representation from unions, employers, devolved governments and local councils. It would oversee migration planning in tandem with domestic training and labour needs.
End the ‘Hostile Environment: ’The “hostile environment” policy has failed. It hasn’t stopped undocumented migration but has harmed legally resident migrants, created fear in public services, and fostered racial profiling.
Suggestion: Repeal hostile environment provisions, such as landlord immigration checks and NHS charging for certain categories. These are morally questionable, legally precarious, and economically inefficient. Replace them with a rights-based compliance framework rooted in the rule of law.
A realistic migration policy isn’t soft—it’s strategic. It invests where needed, plans long-term, and treats migrants not as a threat, but as part of the solution to our ageing population, skill shortages, and public service challenges.
Compassion, clarity, and common sense are not mutually exclusive. It’s time the UK’s migration policy reflected that.
Bryan
All eminently sensible, so nothing will happen.
But I thank you.
Richard
Thank you, both.
A year or so after the blue and yellow Tories got into power, I was part of City initiatives to kick start the economy. Some measures similar to what Bryan proposes were suggested. An exasperated bankster called out Theresa May as THE stumbling block. The Home Office delegate kinda, sorta nodded.
Some years later, a retired official who had worked with May in the 1980s said he wasn’t surprised by her attitude in government.
Spot on. Further to the more enlightened migration policies I outlined the other day, we need in particular:
1. Enhanced Data Collection: Implementing robust mechanisms to track both immigration and emigration to provide a clearer picture of migration patterns
2. Sector-Specific Visa Programs: Developing targeted visa schemes for sectors experiencing labour shortages, such as social care.
3. Public Education Campaigns: Launching initiatives to educate the public on the realities of migration, its benefits, and the actual data would counteract the distorted narratives prevalent in the media and politics.
4. Community Engagement: Fostering dialogue between migrants and local communities to build trust, dispel myths, and promote social cohesion.
Earlier this week when hearing of the Labour Government’s plan to restrict immigration, Dr Donald Macaskill, the chair of Scottish Care, an organisation which provides care homes, home support and other services in our country, said that he was horrified at the proposals. Now this is a person who is regularly platformed by B.B.C Scotland, and other media outlets, criticising the Scottish Government over a range of topics. According to Macaskill, staff shortages already exist, and this policy is just going to make matters worse. He also made the point, and I can’t verify this, that if every school leaver in Scotland this summer took a job in the care sector, it would still not be enough fill the vacancies. I am fortunate that I have home care for my wife, but at the moment there are over 6,000 waiting to be assessed for a care package, and over 3,000 waiting for a package to be put in place. Surely if Labour go ahead with this policy, this situation will only be acerbated, not only in Scotland, but throughout the U.K.
Correct.
Another factor which is usually overlooked is the effect of covid on student emigration numbers. The numbers of overseas students completing courses and returning to their home countries in 2023 and 2024 is likely to be sharply down, because they wouldn’t have been able to start courses in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic. So more students recruited with few leaving will inevitably mean a net inflow. With no government action at all, this would be likely to return to a more balanced situation by 2026. I’d assumed that this got little mention because the government of the day might want to take ‘credit’ for a reduction in numbers on their watch, even if it was entirely a statistical artefact. If new student recruitment is restricted, might we even see a net emigration in this category in the next few years when the 2023 intake complete their courses and many return home.
Good point.
A small but important point regarding social care.
Reducing the number of people eligible for benefits, such as PIP, also prevents hospital beds being freed up from people well enough to be discharged. Pip was largely designed to enhance the funding choices of people in need of care, much of that care is provided by migrant labour at low cost, an essential service never the less. Labour are constantly attacking the most vulnerable in society.
Neoliberal thinking seems entirely disconnected from reality, never focusing on need, only ever looking in the wrong direction when it comes to benefiting society as a whole. Small focus from small minded people.
UK’s new visa rules have been slammed in Spain where many Brits who go to live there have never learned the language. They also often live in British communities, a home from home.
“The country’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez, from the Socialist Workers’ Party, has adopted a radically different policy towards migration than the UK, welcoming more migrants to a country with a low birth rate and a jobs shortfall.”
https://inews.co.uk/news/world/uk-new-visa-rules-spain-language-3692763?ico=most_read_by_subscribers
The Brits overseas, or Ex-pats, as I think they like to be called. They don’t like to refer to themselves as immigrants.
I believe that even Farage and Reform refer to Brits who go and live in someone else’s country as “ex-pats” rather than immigrants. Hardly surprising as Richard Tice, UK MP, now splits his time between Skegness and the UAE after his partner, the journalist who hates immigrants coming to the UK, Isabel Oakeshott left the UK to live there.
https://www.lincolnshireworld.com/news/people/mp-richard-tice-splitting-time-between-skegness-and-dubai-after-partner-leaves-uk-4954042
Am I the only one who thinks that “ex-pat” sounds terribly colonial?
The UK is a very interesting country when it comes to the double standards that our politicians like to adopt and preach. It’s almost as if they don’t believe the same rules should apply to them. Who would have guessed that!
Ex-pat is pure colonial era garbage.
Thank you.
The guy fronting the company, not party, in the Commons, Farage*, divides his time between the UK, US and Belgium. He has more than his British passport. I have heard Belgian and German. He has a house in Brussels.
*Interesting name, Farage. I have never come across it in France, a country I’m very familiar with and from where he says its originates. I have come across a variant in Saudi Arabia, another country I’m familiar with, Faraaj. At home, we call him Najib or Najib al Faraaj.
🙂
I thought Farage couldn’t get a German passport. He tried to get one in a hurry before his wife divorced him, so when he was still married to a German citizen. He was turned down. Their children have German passports but not him.
Much to agree with. Thanks so much for a rational, well argued, post, which is very rare on immigration these days.
The issue of importing low cost labour is the driver for considerable immigration. It is this part of immigration (excluding Ukraine, Hong Kong, students, asylum seekers, foreign spouses of UK citizens, and the like) that may be problematic. And it seems to be the government that is driving this because they want low cost care workers for the NHS, and low cost trades people and others. So it is confused, to say the least, to try to limit immigration to graduates.
But the desire for low cost workers seems to be typical neoliberal thinking, amongst other things treating Labour as a commodity not as people. As you point out, the number of vacancies for care workers should push up pay – but it doesn’t. A clear failure of the market. That’s because the system is currently arranged to increase inequality. I am frequently irritated by pundits who say UK workers don’t want to work in care, don’t want to wipe bottoms (as if that’s all that care workers do). If one said this about another national group it would clearly be racist and xenophobic – but apparently it’s OK today to say it about UK workers. I don’t think that UK workers are any more work shy or squeamish than other groups. I would point out that UK doctors don’t seem to have a particular problem with conducting intimate examinations or procedures. No, the reason why it’s hard to find British workers for some jobs is that the pay is far too low.
I’m appalled that politicians find it acceptable to exploit poor people from abroad to do jobs at wages that are objectively too low. I’m appalled that the NHS seems to think it’s OK to plunder the skilled workers, I’m thinking particularly of doctors, trained in poor countries. To me this is simply unethical. It is also unfair to UK citizens who want to work, but simply can’t afford to for the wages available.
So problems of immigration are all tied in with the neoliberal agenda and increasing inequality. If we paid appropriate wages, and conducted our own training, we need not have such a demand for foreign labour. Solutions such as a universal basic income, higher minimum wage and a properly progressive tax system (low taxes for low earners) who go a long way to resolving the issue.
But businesses and government claim they would go bust if they had to employ British workers. That’s derp. The UK is still a rich country. We can afford to pay our workers properly and fairly (and we’d have a happier society if we did). But that’s blocked by a small minority sequestering a grossly disproportionate share of the country’s income and wealth. Of course we can’t suddenly change from importing low cost labour. It will, as you point out, take years of adjustment, but it certainly can be done.
Actually, demographics suggest it probably can’t be done, ultimately.
Perhaps so 🙂
But that’s a whole other, interesting, discussion. Meanwhile, we can at least move towards a more balanced approach where we employ both local and foreign workers in what will, I hope, no longer be such low paid work.
Ultimately, and perhaps not so many decades in the future, this country may have to manage with its own human resources, as the world population peaks before slowly declining.
Thanks again. 🙂
The steps to a crisis of conflicting policies:
1. Whitehall silos never change, they merely appoint cross-departmental committees.
2. The Treasury waits to see the committee agenda and membership, then appoints an official at a higher grade, thereby gaining control.
3. The Cabinet is the only remaining body that can recognise and resolve conflicts, but as Richard posted a few days ago, cabinet members have no agency, they are merely ciphers for no. 10 special advisers.
I was encouraged to see this challenge to Starmer’s appallingly inflammatory language from UK faith communities… who probably have more direct experience of immigration than the average MP.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/may/16/senior-faith-leaders-urge-starmer-to-tone-down-migration-rhetoric
I’d love to know what Starmer thought about reaction to his carefully selected Powellite language – phrases like “incalculable harm – squalid chapter – island of strangers”. Maybe he’ll try channelling David Duke & the KKK next?
Tice thinks we should copy Dubai.
https://leftfootforward.org/2025/05/reform-deputy-leader-richard-tice-praises-dubai-for-just-imprisoning-or-deporting-anyone-who-cannot-look-after-themselves/
Recent evidence of a positive response to the issue of care worker pay through the use of the Real Living Wage in Northumberland: https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/changes-northumberlands-care-system-saw-31643241
Please stop saying that bricklayers can be imported! Unlike carpentry, proper brickwork skills in these islands are only available in the (old) Commonwealth , Low Countries & North America. Some of the horror stories surrounding new housing are testament to the shortage.
People who can be trained as bricklayers can be imported.
A brilliantly lucid and concise piece of analysis. The lack of deeper and joined-up thinking in our government is truly terrifying. Also, why don’t we get analysis like this on, say, the “Today” programme?
They have my number.
May I suggest if we want to sort migration out
1. We need a proper ID card system & population register. Given that about 75% of us hold passports I dont see rolling this out over 10 years a significant problem. The DWP also have a database with every holder of a National Insurance number on it and I understand that they plan to link it to the UKBA system to record exit from & entry to the UK. I would suggest that anyone currently over pension age should be excluded from this requirement to make things simpler
2. As part of the roll out we offer an amnesty to anyone currently in the UK without the appropriate consents – that by the way is a Boris Johnson idea, and offer free citizenship applications to those here legally.
3. We need the Department for Employment to take a proactive role in Labour Force planning ie education, training and forecasting the numbers needed in the workforce. There also needs to be a more proactive enforcement of employment law and ‘discouraging’ low productivity employment eg hand car washes
4. Following on from 3 we can then look at the numbers of migrant workers needed
5. As was done after WW2 I suggest a ‘Recruitment’ organisation to brink migrant workers to the UK certainly from less developed nations.
6. And of course we need to provide proper housing, healthcare, education etc for the whole UK population.
Not I suggest a difficult plan but one that needs the scarcest resource, political will