Net Migration Figures

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I presume the hon. Lady will welcome the fact that the Government have met their target of 600,000 international students coming to the UK every year—as set by our international education strategy— 10 years early. Last year, 605,000 international students came, and I suspect the number this year will be higher still. There is absolutely no sense that the Government are reneging on those commitments or creating an environment that is unwelcoming to international students. We want universities to focus on teaching, and not inadvertently create a backdoor to immigration status here in the UK. That is why we have made the changes we have made this week, which have been broadly welcomed by both the public and the sector.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

The Office for National Statistics has this morning published the record net migration figure of 606,000, including 114,000 long-term arrivals from Ukraine and 52,000 from Hong Kong, so well below 170,000 in total. We all remember a previous Conservative Prime Minister falsely promising the British people that he would bring net migration down to the tens of thousands, and the last-but-one Prime Minister promising that he would bring net migration figures to below 250,000, although he also failed miserably. I will not mention the previous Prime Minister, because she did not even last two months before crashing the economy. The last Conservative party manifesto pledged that

“overall numbers will come down”.

How is that going? What went wrong?

[Robert Jenrick]

We would not have the tools to tackle net migration had we taken the hon. Gentleman’s advice and remained within the European Union. It is only as a result of our new freedoms that we can control our immigration system. He has voted against every possible opportunity to tackle either legal or illegal migration, so on this argument he has no foot to stand on.