Welcome to F.T. Politics, the Financial Times podcast on British politics.

I'm Sebastian Payne in the latest of our summer specials

who are breaking out of the news cycle

to take a look at some of the big policy questions

facing the UK.

This week, we'll be looking at the hot potato of immigration.

Over the last decade, net migration has been steadily on the rise at the same time public unease

has grown about the changing British society.

Controlling migration is one of the key factors in last year's vote to leave

the EU and the country is overdue a proper conversation and some leadership about what kind

of immigration policy it should have.

We're going to try and have a go at that here.

I'm delighted to be joined by Helen Worrell, the F.T.'s public policy

correspondent, Owen Tudor, who is head of European policy

and international relations at the TUC,

plus Steve Ballinger from the British Future Think Tank.

Thank you all for joining.

So let's begin with some numbers.

Net migration to the UK in the year running up to March 2017 was 246,000.

That's down 81,000 on the previous 12 months.

In particular this was due to EU citizens leaving the UK the highest outflow in a decade actually.

So it does look like net migration is falling, but it's a long way off the conservative government's target of reducing it to tens of thousands.

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