Rishi Sunak is facing a fresh backlash over immigration after figures revealed that the number of foreigners granted visas to live in the UK hit a record 1.4 million last year.
The rise was driven by a 46 per cent increase in foreign workers, with a total of 616,371 granted work-related visas. Almost half of those granted visas were family members of workers.
The number of care workers granted visas tripled last year to 105,881 as care homes took advantage of a relaxation in visa rules to hire from overseas to plug a shortage of 150,000 jobs in the sector, according to Home Office figures for 2023 that were published on Thursday.
A total of 605,504 students and their dependants were granted visas last year, a drop of 5 per cent on 2022. The remaining visas were granted to refugees from Ukraine and Hong Kong, family visas and Europeans under the EU settlement scheme.
Migration experts said the figures exposed how reliant government employers were on foreign labour.
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The Home Office has insisted that the numbers will start falling once a series of measures announced in December start to take effect. James Cleverly, the home secretary, said new restrictions on foreign students, care workers, increases to minimum salary requirements and family visas would reduce net migration by about 300,000 per year. Net migration hit 745,000 in the year to June 2023.
However, Suella Braverman, who was home secretary from late 2022 until November 2023, said the government must go significantly further to avoid putting unsustainable pressure on public services by adopting measures she submitted to the prime minister when in office, which included an overall cap on immigration.
She wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “This cannot go on: we don’t have enough homes, GPs or schools to support this level. The PM must adopt policies I pushed for that would have prevented this national disaster: we need a cap on overall numbers. Britain will be unrecognisable if this carries on.
“It’s not what the British people, including me, voted for.”
Separately, the UK granted asylum to 62,336 people last year, the highest recorded. This was driven by Sunak’s pledge to clear a backlog of 92,000 old cases as well as a high grant rate, with two thirds of asylum applications accepted last year. Among those granted asylum were 15 Rwandans.
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Despite the prime minister’s pledge there were still 128,786 people in the asylum backlog awaiting a decision, down 28 per cent on 2022. They include 3,902 asylum applications from the “legacy” backlog that Sunak promised to clear by the end of last year.
Of those, 45,768 were living in Home Office-funded hotels at the end of December.
A total of 84,425 people claimed asylum last year, down from 99,939 in 2022 which was the highest total for any calendar year since 2002.
There are likely to be fresh questions over the Home Office’s handling of asylum applications as the latest figures revealed that 25,583 were withdrawn last year, more than four times the number for 2022. Many will have been from asylum seekers who have gone missing and the Home Office has lost track of, while the Home Office has also faced accusations that it used withdrawn claims to help cut the asylum backlog.
Small boat arrivals made up only 37 per cent of asylum claims, with the rest made up of people who came via other irregular routes or from people claiming asylum after their visa had expired.
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A total of 36,704 migrants were detected arriving in the UK illegally last year, of which 80 per cent came on small boats.
The figures published today also reveal that 98 per cent of all migrants who arrived by small boats since 2018 have remained in the UK.
Of the 114,345 migrants who crossed between 2018 and 2023, only 2,580 have been removed and the vast majority — 1,889 — were removed last year. Most of them were returned to Albania under the enhanced returns deal signed with Tirana in December 2022.
The figures showed that the number of migrants coming in each boat is increasing, with an average of 49 per boat recorded last year, up from 41 on 2022.
The Home Office has also accepted that poorer weather contributed to the reduction in small boat crossings last year, which fell 36 per cent to a total of 29,437. Small boat arrivals from October to December 2023 were two thirds lower than in the same three months of 2022. The Home Office said: “This may partly have been due to poorer weather conditions, among other factors.”
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Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said: “These damning statistics show how Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives have lost control of our immigration system and our border security, and have no plan to turn it around.”
Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said the record numbers granted asylum show that the “vast majority” of people claiming asylum in the UK are genuine refugees and also called for the Home Office to stop counting withdrawn asylum claims towards reductions in the asylum backlog.
He said: “Despite the work to reduce the backlog, there are still over 128,000 men, women and children stuck in limbo waiting for a decision.”
He added: “Withdrawals should never be used as a way to reduce the backlog and should only be employed in certain, very specific circumstances.”
His organisation said withdrawals can have “terrible consequences”, with people “ending up destitute and cut off from much-needed support”.
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The surge in work visas issued last year was driven by a rise in health and care visas, which made up half of them.
A total of 337,240 visas were granted to main applicants who brought 279,131 dependants with them.
There were 146,477 visas issued to foreign health and care workers — almost double the previous year — and the surge was driven by 105,881 care workers. In total, health and care workers brought 203,452 family members with them last year, accounting for almost three quarters of all work-related dependants.
The number of dependants coming to the UK are likely to fall considerably from next month when new rules come in that will bar care workers from bringing family with them.
There will also be new rules requiring care homes to be regulated by the Care Quality Commission before they can hire from abroad in an effort to crackdown on abuse of the visa route.
Dr Madeleine Sumption, director of Migration Observatory at Oxford University, said the figures exposed how immigration rules were being manipulated to help government employers hire from abroad while the private sector faced increasing restrictions.
“When free movement ended, the government said that employers would have to adjust. It turns out what this meant was that other employers would have to adjust,” she said.
“Where workers are directly or indirectly employed by the government, there has been much less enthusiasm to restrict. This has meant the public sector has increasingly dominated the skilled work visa system.”
Separate statistics published by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities revealed a 203 per cent increase in the number of asylum seekers given homelessness support after leaving asylum accommodation. There was a 88 per cent year-on-year increase in non-EU nationals sleeping rough last autumn.
