England, immigration record, Sunak promises to stop migration flow

The British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has warned that "uncontrolled" legal migration risks causing unmanageable pressure on housing, schools and hospitals, promising voters that he will stop the trafficking of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants across the Channel. But he has abandoned his predecessor Boris Johnson's pledge to keep net immigration below 250,000 a year.

Annual net immigration to the UK has reached a record high of over 600,000, despite government promises to reduce it.

Much-anticipated data from the Office for National Statistics released on Thursday showed around 1.2 million people have moved to Britain in the past year, with 557,000 emigrating for a balance of 606,000.

This broke the previous net inflow record of 504,000 set just a year earlier.The immigrants included 925,000 from non-European Union countries, 151,000 from the EU - despite the end of free movement to and from the bloc with Brexit in 2021 - and 88,000 Britons who had lived abroad.

These figures were driven by a boom in overseas students at British universities, the recruitment of skilled workers from Africa and Asia to fill vacancies, the government's general offer of citizenship to Hong Kong Chinese and refugees from the conflict in Ukraine. But the country has also seen tens of thousands of illegal immigrants smuggled by sea from mainland Europe over the past year.

TV presenter Nigel Farage, founder of the Brexit Party – now the Reform Party – accused Sunak's government of betraying the electorate.

“These figures are a total breach of trust between voters and this government,” Farage tweeted. "The population explosion continues, our quality of life is declining and all the government will do is give us more lies."

Reform Party leader Richard Tice suggested that the Conservative government was more interested in fashionable environmental policies than immigration control.

“Conservatives have cheated and lied to us,” Tice tweeted. "They have deliberately allowed net immigration in 2022 to rise to 606,000. It will be the same or even more in 2023 - Result: unaffordable housing and longer waiting lists.

David Kurten, leader of the small social-conservative Heritage party, went further and called for the UK to withdraw from international migration treaties, repatriate smuggled migrants to France and restrict work and student visas.

In a television appearance on Thursday morning, the prime minister admitted the immigration figures were "too high", noting that they included 150,000 student visas."The numbers are too high, it's that simple," Sunak said. "And I want to get them off."