The quarterly and annual immigration stats are due to be published this morning. Ahead of those dropping, the government is announcing a change to immigration rules to block employers who commit “serious offences” from hiring overseas workers.
Thursday 28 November 2024 07:13, UK
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This morning morning, the UK’s net migration statistics will be released, along with Home Office data on small boat crossings. They will grab headlines and give us a sense of the big picture trends.
Labour can’t be blamed, or take credit, for the figures, which will cover the year to June.
Their plan to tackle irregular migration is a long-term one and will take time to be born out in the numbers.
What we will see tomorrow is the impact of inherited policy on legal migration, which makes up the vast majority of the figures.
The expectation is overall net migration will fall.
The factors behind the fall
Professor Brian Bell, chair of the Migration Advisory Committee, says it’s “very difficult not to see them going down”.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts net migration will fall from around 685,000 last year to around 300,000 in the next three years.
Sir Keir Starmer, the latest prime minister to pledge to get overall net migration falling, will benefit from a combination of factors.
Tighter immigration rules that came into force earlier this year – for example, a ban on care workers and students bringing dependents to the UK – and the fact fewer people are coming on humanitarian routes from places like Hong Kong and Ukraine.
But those factors won’t solve the problems behind the figures. The care sector is still struggling to recruit and hard-up universities benefit from international student fees.
‘They don’t see the human side’
Dover care home manager Raj Sehgal tells me the dependents policy, brought in by the Conservatives and kept on by Labour, has had a “devastating impact” on the “quality and calibre” of recruits.
“Unfortunately governments work in figures, they don’t see the human side of what we do,” he says.
The government has announced plans to up-skill British workers and Professor Bell says “good progress” has been made, but he adds: “The problem is going to be it is going to cost money.
“If you want to train more Brits to do engineering jobs you have to pay for them to do that training, you have to fund universities and further education colleges to put on those courses.”
Labour may well preside over a significant fall in legal migration.
Success, though, will be judged on whether they can solve the fundamentals beyond the numbers.
Good morning!
Welcome back to the Politics Hub on this Thursday, 28 November.
Immigration is very much the focus in Westminster today, with both quarterly and annual statistics due to be published at 9.30am.
We’ll have live coverage on Sky News and here in the Politics Hub as the figures drop, so do join us for that.
The government is getting in on the action with an announcement of a change to immigration rules – employers who “commit serious offences” will be banned for hiring overseas workers, upping the current penalty from up to a year maximum.
But that’s unlikely to impress Nigel Farage, who has his own “special announcement” later this morning at a Reform UK news conference.
But while the talk will be immigration for a little while, it will rapidly turn to assisted dying, on which the first vote will be held in the Commons tomorrow.
Over in parliament…
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy and her team will face questions from MPs for an hour from 9.30am.
After that, barring any ministerial statements or urgent questions, the Commons leader will set out the forthcoming business, and MPs will be able to ask almost any question of her.
Over in the Lords, former veteran cabinet minister Michael Gove will give evidence to a committee on the UK constitution.
And the bill to bring railways back into public ownership will receive royal assent and become law.
We’ll be discussing all of that and more with:
Follow along for the very latest political news.
We’ll be back tomorrow for all the latest from Westminster.
But until then, you can scroll through the page to catch up on today.
Thanks for joining us!
Sir Ed Davey is launching a bid for Christmas number one with a charity single called Love Is Enough.
The Liberal Democrat leader is teaming up with Bath Philharmonia’s Young Carers’ Choir for the song written by six current and former young carers.
The song was recorded in Bath last month with a full orchestra, 20 singers and Sir Ed.
The proceeds from downloads and streams of the single will go to the Carers Trust and Bath Philharmonia.
Sir Ed’s idea for a Christmas release was inspired by his own time as a chorister when he was a carer himself as a teenager.
He said he was sure the song would “strike a chord” with carers and their families.
The MP said: “When I sang In The Bleak Mid-Winter in my local church in 1978, neither I nor my brothers nor my mum fully appreciated how much our lives were all about to change.
“For mum’s cancer was getting worse and I was becoming a young carer. The next two-and-a-half years before my mother eventually died were extremely tough, but they were also full of love.
“When I heard the opening lyrics to Love Is Enough – ‘Every second we have left is worth a thousand others’ – they struck home and meant so much.”
Not to worry – you can watch tonight’s episode in full below.
Or you can scroll through the Politics Hub to catch up on the highlights, including interviews with Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy and former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove.
Back in October, the government struck an agreement with Mauritius to hand over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands.
The deal includes the tropical atoll Diego Garcia used by the US and UK as a military base, although the UK will continue to use it for “an initial period of 99 years”.
What are the Chagos Islands?
The Chagos Islands is a group of seven atolls in the Indian Ocean, comprising over 60 Islands.
Mauritius has long argued that it was illegally forced to give up the islands in return for its own independence in 1968, and had already agreed to lease Diego Garcia to the US to use as a military base.
In recent years, the UK has been facing diplomatic pressure to renounce its claim to the islands, and these negotiations got under way before Sir Keir Starmer became prime minister.
Why was Britain facing pressure?
Chagossians were forced to leave the central Indian Ocean territory by 1973 to make way for the military base.
The expulsions are regarded as one of the most shameful parts of Britain’s modern colonial history and Chagossians have spent decades fighting to return to the islands.
The United Nations’ highest court, the International Court of Justice, previously ruled the UK’s administration of the territory was “unlawful” and must end.
Negotiations to hand them over began in November 2022, under the Conservative government, with James Cleverly as foreign secretary.
Once it was done, a joint statement by the prime ministers of the UK and Mauritius said the deal would “address wrongs of the past”.
The foreign secretary, David Lammy, said it would still secure the “vital” military base and ensure the UK can still play a role “safeguarding global security” in the Indo-Pacific.
What’s the reaction been?
Many Tories reacted with fury, even though the negotiations began under their party’s watch, and Reform’s Nigel Farage wasn’t happy either.
Critics warned the move will empower China.
It was welcomed by US President Joe Biden, who hailed the “historic agreement” as a “clear demonstration that through diplomacy and partnership, countries can overcome long-standing historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes”.
But there have been some reports Donald Trump, who will become president in the new year, isn’t as keen.
Mauritius’s new PM, Navin Ramgoolam, is also thought to have reservations and criticised it before he was elected on 12 November.
Former prime ministers David Cameron and Gordon Brown both lost a child in tragic circumstances. But they’ve now come to a different conclusion about assisted dying.
Lord Cameron lost son Ivan, aged six, who was severely disabled and suffered from epilepsy and cerebral palsy, in February 2009. Mr Brown, then PM, cancelled PMQs out of respect.
When assisted dying was last debated in the Commons in 2015, when he was prime minister, Mr Cameron voted against it. But now, in a major and potentially influential intervention, he’s changed his mind.
A rare stance among Tories
“When we know that there’s no cure, when we know death is imminent, when patients enter a final and acute period of agony, then surely, if they can prevent it and – crucially – want to prevent it, we should let them make that choice,” Lord Cameron writes in The Times.
But the former premier is in a minority of Conservatives who back the bill and most senior Tory MPs – including Kemi Badenoch, Priti Patel and former leader Iain Duncan Smith – are opposed.
Lord Cameron is also the first of all the UK’s living former prime ministers to back Kim Leadbeater’s controversial bill, which is being debated in the Commons on Friday.
This week, three former Conservative PMs – Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss – let it be known they oppose the bill. Baroness May, like Lord Cameron, will have a vote if the bill reaches the Lords.
Watch: How could MPs vote on assisted dying?
Mr Brown’s daughter Jennifer, born seven weeks prematurely weighing just 2lb 4oz, died after just 11 days in January 2002 following a brain haemorrhage on day four of her short life.
A son of the manse who was strongly influenced by his father, a Church of Scotland minister, Mr Brown says the tragedy convinced him of the value and imperative of good end-of-life care, not the case for assisted dying.
Lord Cameron, the former prime minister, has come out in favour of the assisted dying bill tonight.
He had previously been against the legislation, put forward by a Labour MP, which proposes allowing some terminal patients to end their lives.
Writing in The Times, he said: “When we know that there’s no cure, when we know death is imminent, when patients enter a final and acute period of agony, then surely, if they can prevent it and — crucially — want to prevent it, we should let them make that choice.”
Two days until MPs vote
On Friday, MPs in the House of Commons will debate and vote on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill.
The proposed law would make it legal for over-18s who are terminally ill to be given medical assistance to end their own life in England and Wales.
The bill sets out detailed requirements in order to be eligible.
The Labour MP proposing it, Kim Leadbeater, says the safeguards are the “most robust” in the world, but others argue it is a “slippery slope towards death on demand”.
On Thursday morning, the UK’s net migration statistics will be released, along with Home Office data on small boat crossings. They will grab headlines and give us a sense of the big picture trends.
Labour can’t be blamed, or take credit, for the figures, which will cover the year to June.
Their plan to tackle irregular migration is a long-term one and will take time to be born out in the numbers.
What we will see tomorrow is the impact of inherited policy on legal migration, which makes up the vast majority of the figures.
The expectation is overall net migration will fall.
The factors behind the fall
Professor Brian Bell, chair of the Migration Advisory Committee, says it’s “very difficult not to see them going down”.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicts net migration will fall from around 685,000 last year to around 300,000 in the next three years.
Sir Keir Starmer, the latest prime minister to pledge to get overall net migration falling, will benefit from a combination of factors.
Tighter immigration rules that came into force earlier this year – for example, a ban on care workers and students bringing dependents to the UK – and the fact fewer people are coming on humanitarian routes from places like Hong Kong and Ukraine.
But those factors won’t solve the problems behind the figures. The care sector is still struggling to recruit and hard-up universities benefit from international student fees.
‘They don’t see the human side’
Dover care home manager Raj Sehgal tells me the dependents policy, brought in by the Conservatives and kept on by Labour, has had a “devastating impact” on the “quality and calibre” of recruits.
“Unfortunately governments work in figures, they don’t see the human side of what we do,” he says.
The government has announced plans to up-skill British workers and Professor Bell says “good progress” has been made, but he adds: “The problem is going to be it is going to cost money.
“If you want to train more Brits to do engineering jobs you have to pay for them to do that training, you have to fund universities and further education colleges to put on those courses.”
Labour may well preside over a significant fall in legal migration.
Success, though, will be judged on whether they can solve the fundamentals beyond the numbers.
Sophy Ridge‘s conversation with Lisa Nandy now turns to the situation around the Chagos Islands deal – and fears it could fall through.
It was reported overnight the new prime minister of Mauritius has “reservations” about a deal struck between his predecessor and the UK, and some think the incoming Trump administration doesn’t like it either.
Under the deal, the UK would give up sovereignty of the islands, and lease Diego Garcia, home to a UK-US military base, for at least 99 years.
“We’re already in conversations with the newly elected president-elect,” Ms Nandy says. “The prime minister has been over to meet with him, in the run-up to the election.”
‘No concerns’ about deal
She points out the deal was done “with the support of the Americans”.
“The new administration are free to have that conversation with us as a new government,” Ms Nandy adds.
“We couldn’t continue with a situation where the future of, not just the Chagos Islands, but the military base there, was uncertain.”
She doesn’t have “any concerns” about the future of the deal.
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