Fact check: Reform UK migrants claim and minister's inflation mix-up

Leader Live

2 days ago

Has Labour 'allowed the biggest influx of migrants in British history'?
Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice MP claimed in a newspaper column a few weeks ago that 'the statistics show without a doubt that this Labour government has allowed the biggest influx of migrants in British history'.
It's not clear which figures Mr Tice was basing this claim on – we've asked him and Reform UK, and haven't had a response. But the statistics we've been able to check – both those available at the time Mr Tice made his claim, and those published since – don't appear to support it.
And when we asked Oxford University's Migration Observatory about Mr Tice's claim, it told us: 'We cannot identify any data that support the assertion that the current government has been responsible for the biggest influx of migrants in British history, and we are unclear how Mr Tice came to this conclusion.'
Mr Tice referred only to 'migrants' and did not specify that he was talking about any particular group of migrants, but some on social media have suggested he intended to refer solely to Channel crossings, which have been at record levels this year and hit the headlines again this weekend after almost 1,200 migrants were recorded as arriving via small boat on Saturday.
Between January 1 2025 and April 27 2025 (the day Mr Tice's article was published), government statistics show 9,885 migrants were detected crossing the English Channel in small boats, and between January 1 and May 31 this figure was 14,812.
Both these figures are higher than for equivalent periods in other years going back to 2018, when statistics for this measure began. But they don't support the claim Mr Tice made – firstly because they only refer to a small proportion of all migrants, and secondly because they don't cover Labour's full time in office.
In the time between Labour forming a government on July 5 2024 and April 27 2025, 33,127 migrants arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel on small boats, according to government statistics. This isn't a record – the equivalent total between July 5 2022 and April 27 2023 was 38,600.
In terms of overall migrant numbers, there are various different sets of data, but one of the most commonly cited is the estimate of long-term international migration published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The most recent such figures cover the year to December 2024, when 948,000 people are estimated to have moved to the UK. (Over the same period 517,000 people left, so total net migration that year is estimated to have been 431,000.)
These figures can't tell us exactly how many have arrived under Labour, as they cover roughly six months of the last Conservative government and the first six months of Labour. The next set of figures, which will cover the year ending June 2025 and are expected to be published in the autumn, will more reliably tell us about the change under Labour.
But overall the figures for 2024 were significantly down on the year before. In the year ending December 2023 around 1,326,000 people were estimated to have moved to the UK – a record high. (And 466,000 people left, so net migration that year was an estimated 860,000.)
Net migration is estimated to have reached a record high of 906,000 in the year ending June 2023, when 1,320,000 people moved to the UK and 414,000 people left.
So while the ONS migration estimates can't tell us specifically what the change in the number of immigrants coming to the UK has been under Labour, they appear to suggest that the 'biggest influx' of migrants on record so far took place under the previous Conservative government.
The Migration Observatory believes this is the case, telling us: 'Data clearly show that the 'biggest influx of migrants in British history' took place under the previous administration.'
School standards minister mixes up inflation and interest rates
Speaking about the cost of living in an interview on Friday, school standards minister Catherine McKinnell MP claimed 'we've seen inflation coming down'.
That's not what the latest inflation figures show, however, and the Department for Education has since told us she'd intended to refer to interest rates.
While the Bank Rate – which is set by the Bank of England to influence the interest rates charged by banks – is currently one percentage point lower than it was when Labour came into government on July 5 2024, inflation (the change in prices for goods and services over time, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, or CPI) is higher than it was when Labour entered government.
In the 12 months to June 2024 – the last full month of the previous Conservative government – inflation stood at 2%, while in the 12 months to July 2024 – the month Labour formed a government – it was 2.2%. As of April 2025, annual CPI inflation was 3.5%, 0.9 percentage points higher than the previous month's figure. Other commonly used measures of inflation show similar trends.
This isn't the first time we've seen government ministers confuse interest rate and inflation figures. Earlier this year we fact checked the Prime Minister and Home Office minister Seema Malhotra MP after they both wrongly claimed interest rates had been at 11% under the previous government. As Ms Malhotra later made clear in an edited post, the 11% figure actually referred to the peak rate of CPI inflation in 2022.