Welcome to In Conversation, the regular podcast of InCompass. Go to InCompass-Hiferoop.com for free access to all our

podcast to date. This is Paul Adamson and I'm in conversation with Jonathan Portes. Jonathan

Portis is Professor of Economics and Public Policy

at King's College, London, and is widely regarded as a leading expert in the field of immigration

and migration issues. And recently you've published a quite a long essay where you talk about

many of the, some of the paradoxes about immigration. You say that the immigration debate in British

politics has become somewhat

confused and complicated. What made you say that? Well, I think the remarkable thing perhaps

about what's happened since the Brexit referendum, which is the focus of my essay, the last four years, is that almost

everything has changed, but nothing has changed. So as of now, the UK still has pretty much

the same immigration system it had in 2016, with a relatively restricted system of essentially work permits for people coming from outside the EU

and free movement for people coming from within the EU.

Even though we left the EU, the transition period, which goes to the end of this year,

means that free movement continues.

So policy terms, very little has changed.

Yet both in terms of what's actually happening to immigration and in terms of the nature of the

political and policy debate, everything has changed.

First of all, we've seen a very, very sharp fall in net migration from the EU.

Of course, now and during the COVID crisis, migration is probably essentially zero in both directions anyway.

But even leaving that aside, even before the COVID crisis,

we'd seen this really sharp fall in migration from the EU. In other words, both fewer people

coming here from elsewhere in the EU and some people moving back from the UK to their

...