Hello and welcome to Not Another One, the podcast with me, Steve Richards, Ian Martin, Miranda Green and Tim Montgomery.

Tim is up with us this week, but we're here and we have one of

the thorniest themes. Well, actually, there are so many, aren't they? We dressed asisted dying

last week, but another very thorny theme, which is immigration and the numbers coming to the UK.

Literally, before we started recording, I heard Ian exclaim, these figures are staggering. So explain before we kind of explore the wider

issues, why you exclaimed, have you seen these figures? They are staggering. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean,

this is going to dominate. I'd be very surprised if it, if it doesn't dominate the news over the next

few days, loads of political implications to unpack what it means for the main parties, what

reform will do with it. But the key thing is the

number for the immigration for the period of net migration is 906,000 for the period ending June

2023. So that's been revised up. Now, this is a bit complicated. How can the numbers be up and down simultaneously? They've then come down again, you know, in the following year. But, you know, but that's still, there's still, um, 728,000 for the year that follows. So 9606 and then 728,000. So if you think of, think of that in terms of, you know, a city like Newcastle or Leeds being added or something close to it, being added in a single year, a lot to discuss about why it happened. What does it mean? But it is a massive number. It's all's all you know it's be blunt it's almost a

million people in a year it's it's another city uh coming what i find so depressing about this

debate miranda is the complete disconnect between a series of announcements people from hong

kong are welcome here and everyone says quite right too,

a very good decision. People from Ukraine must come here. Very good. Welcome the decision.

Then you hear about a debate between various Tory home secretaries and other people in the

cabinet, like the health secretary saying, we have got to have people here to fill these posts.

And everyone says, oh, we need these posts filled.

And then you get the shock, as Ian has said, of the figure.

But that is the explanation, isn't it?

We need these people here to fill the posts, especially in public services, but in other

places too. So, you know, the great Brexit battle cry take back control was clearly a lot of it

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