Migration Advisory Committee submitted the report in January to inform the Government's White Paper on immigration
The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) last week published a new report on net migration in the UK. Submitted to the Home Office in January 2025 to help inform the Government's White Paper, the report is an updated and expanded version of the chapter on net migration in the MAC's 2023 annual report.
You can read the report online here or download the 25-page PDF version here.
It offers a detailed and objective examination of net migration, its drivers, and potential policy responses. The MAC stresses that it does not offer any view on the appropriate level of net migration, as that is a political decision outside of its scope.
While net migration (defined as the difference between the number of people entering and leaving the UK) is often treated as a simple headline figure, the MAC warns that such numbers can be misleading and incomplete. The MAC explains: "We emphasise that net migration is not a complete picture of the flows of people coming in and out of the UK over the course of a year and does not attempt to capture the relative contribution of different migrants to the economy or society more broadly. Net migration figures are also subject to significant uncertainty and revision which highlights the risk of focusing unduly on a particular data release."
The report looks at how the net migration figures are produced, how net migration has changed over time, and how the UK compares to other, similar countries. Net migration in the year ending June 2023 was the highest on record at 906,000, but the MAC notes that the UK has experienced a broadly similar level of net migration to comparable countries in recent years. Some similar countries, notably Canada and Australia, have experienced considerably higher net migration relative to the size of their resident populations.
As the report also highlights, the UK's foreign-born population is also broadly similar to several comparable countries. The MAC notes: "While the foreign-born population in the UK has grown more quickly than most across this period, this still places it significantly below countries such as Australia and Switzerland at the top of the spectrum (with 29% and 31% foreign-born population respectively) and broadly similar to France, Germany and the United States."
The MAC further notes: "There is no consensus on what might constitute an 'optimum' population level for the UK. […] Our view is that the composition of migration matters more for most of the economic impacts of migration than the aggregate number of people admitted. It is not sensible to discuss overall desirable levels of net migration in isolation from a discussion of the costs and benefits of the routes that comprise net migration."
The report offers valuable analysis of how net migration affects population growth, housing demand, and public services. It also outlines potential policy options for reducing net migration, highlighting the economic and social trade-offs involved.
In concluding, the MAC helpfully and succinctly sums up its overall findings as follows:
"Net migration is a seemingly simple measure but one which is difficult to estimate and often misunderstood, with public discourse focusing mainly on the immigration side of the equation over the emigration side. The most obvious way in which net migration relates to outcomes in the UK is through its impact on population growth. A changing population level has implications for housing and public service provision including education, transport, and the environment. Whilst there is no optimal level of net migration it is an undoubtedly important issue, specifically at the local level, and with varying population projections for different parts of the UK, the UK government and the Devolved Governments are approaching the issue of net migration with different policy priorities in mind.
"It is not possible to have a sensible discussion about how to reduce net migration without examining the immigration system route by route. Different migration categories admit migrants with different characteristics, reasons for coming to the UK, durations of stay and locations within the UK. This determines the type of services that they will demand, what kind of contributions they make to the UK, and for how long they will do so for. This is also important when considering policies aiming to effect net migration which are likely to have differential impacts across the UK's nations and regions.
"If the government wants to reduce net migration, it will face various constraints and trade-offs. In particular, some categories are easier to manipulate using policy than others. The government can relatively easily adjust work-visa policy, for example, and expect this to translate into higher or lower visa grants. By contrast, it is more constrained on family migration (due to the expectation of a right to family life), and especially on asylum (where policies often have limited impacts). One challenge for the government is that the categories that are easiest to reduce are often the ones that are more economically beneficial (namely, skilled work visas and international students).
"It is entirely for government to decide if net migration is too high and needs to be reduced. Whilst there are a range of policy choices that may reduce net migration in the short run, our analysis highlights how difficult it is in practice to have confidence in the likely magnitude of a particular policy change on long-run net migration, which suggests that policymakers may want to be cautious in the promises they make on future migration levels. Finally, we would suggest that government should consider the total impact of a policy change, rather than simply its effect on net migration. For example, a binding cap which reduced the number of care workers allowed would decrease net migration. But what would be the effect on the social care sector? Restricting the ability of students to remain in the UK after graduation would also reduce net migration. But what would be the effect on university finances? Migration policy does not act in isolation."