Does the government’s plan to cut immigration add up?
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 7 December 2023
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Net migration to the UK hit a record high in 2022 – 745,000 more people arrived in the country than emigrated. After 13 years of promising to cut immigration, the government introduced yet another plan this week to reduce numbers. We look at what it would mean for the economy.
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Guest: David Smith, Economics Editor, The Sunday Times.
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Transcript
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| 0:56.0 | The immigration minister has had enough. Just as we hit save on this episode, Robert Genrick resigned, |
| 1:01.0 | saying the emergency legislation the government announced to back up their policy of |
| 1:04.8 | deporting some asylum seekers to Rwanda didn't go far enough. |
| 1:09.8 | Stronger protections were needed, he said, to end the legal challenges getting in the way. |
| 1:15.4 | But what about the bigger migration picture? |
| 1:21.4 | The size and type of immigration to the UK has long been a hot political potato |
| 1:27.0 | and the latest figures only bring that into sharper and for the government more stressful focus. |
| 1:34.0 | Imagine this is 10,000 more people coming into the UK than leaving it. |
| 1:41.0 | Net migration. |
| 1:42.0 | 30 or so years ago. Net migration was just under 80,000, that |
| 1:51.1 | was in 1994 and 1995. but by the year 2000, it had doubled to just under 160,000. |
| 2:04.0 | Around the Brexit referendum, 2016, |
| 2:07.0 | it had doubled again. |
| 2:08.0 | To 311,000, which explains why so many people were shocked by the latest figures for |
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