Official statistics reveal fewer people are seeking to come from abroad to work in the NHS or in social care.
The statistics reveal that the outgoing Conservative government granted some 286,382 work visas overall in the year to June 2024 – 11% down on the previous year.
Detailed Home Office data shows that it approved 89,085 visas for the health and care sector in the year to June 2024 – more than 80% down on April to June of the year before.
The decline in workers wanting to come to the UK comes after the former Conservative government introduced restrictions on foreign workers and their families in an effort to slash overall immigration.
Former Home Secretary James Cleverly announced the new rules in December last year to restrict foreign workers, as figures showed net migration was running at near record levels.
Those restrictions included new minimum salary tests for both workers and members of their family.
The latest figures also show that some 432,000 visas were granted to foreign students to come to the UK in the year ending June 2024 – a total that was 13% down on the previous year.
In the first six months of 2024, the number of related visas granted to members of a student’s family fell by 81%.
Dr Ben Brindle of the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, an independent centre that analyses the statistics, said the fall in visas should theoretically lead to a fall in net migration – figures that will be published at a later date.
“We don’t yet know how many of the recent student arrivals will remain in the UK long term, and any bounce-back in health and care visas would also slow the decline,” he said.
“Nonetheless, the strong indication is that Labour will be able to meet its commitment to reduce net migration from the unusually high levels the UK has recently seen – primarily due to trends that were already in train well before they were elected.”
Before the general election earlier this year, Labour pledged to reduce net migration. It has not set a target but said it aimed to reduce the UK’s reliance on foreign labour through workforce and training, particularly in key sectors such as health and construction.
Seema Malhotra, the minister for immigration, accused the previous Tory government of an “utter failure to tackle skills shortages which has left many employers dependent on recruiting from overseas”.
But she vowed to continue some measures brought in by the previous government, including reducing the number of dependants able to join relatives in the UK.
Mr Cleverly said he “took action” as home secretary, which has led to net migration coming down.
The vast majority of immigration to the UK is legally-sanctioned workers, students and their families. Applications for asylum – part of the system for protection of refugees – are counted separately.
Some 97,000 people sought refuge in the UK to June. That is 8% down on the previous year.
That number includes some 38,784 irregular or clandestine arrivals, 80% of whom came in small boats across the English Channel.
The number of people who were waiting for a decision on their claim for protection was 118,882.
That pile of unresolved cases includes a large number of arrivals from the last two years, which grew after the former Conservative government stopped processing most asylum applications, as part of its plan to send some people to Rwanda instead.
The new Labour government has ordered officials to begin working through that backlog and to establish which of them are genuine refugees and which should be removed from the country.
“Today’s statistics show the utter chaos that our asylum system has been left in,” Ms Malhotra said.
However, Mr Cleverly criticised the government’s decision to reverse the Rwanda deportation policy, and said it had yet to say what it would do with “people who arrive here [and] have their asylum applications rejected from countries like Afghanistan, or Syria or Iran”.
“We can’t send them back to their country of origin. We no longer have a safe third country to send them to. So the government needs to answer this question,” he added.
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