Fact check: Reform UK migrants claim and minister's inflation mix-up
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.
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an hour ago
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Anger, fear and a total rejection of politics: the Palestine Action protest was a snapshot of Britain today
In the third month of this tense, parched summer, the British state is under severe strain. Stripped of resources by 14 years of reckless rightwing government, contorting itself to maintain relations with ever more extreme regimes abroad, expanding its security powers at home through ever more tortured logic, regarded by ever more voters with contempt, a once broadly respected institution is increasingly struggling to maintain its authority. You could see the strain on the faces of some of the police officers, reddening with exertion in the sun, as they arrested 521 people in Parliament Square on Saturday for displaying pieces of paper or cardboard with a seven-word message supporting the proscribed group Palestine Action. It was one of the biggest mass arrests in London's history. The many protesters who refused to be led away had to be lifted off the ground, one by one, without the exercise looking too coercive in front of the cameras. Then their floppy, uncooperative forms had to be carried by clusters of officers through the hostile crowd – to chants of 'genocide police!', 'shame on you!' and 'fascist scum!' – to a ring of police vans at the square's perimeter, which were then sometimes obstructed by further protesters, before they eventually drove away. So many officers were needed that some had come from Wales. When Tony Blair's Labour government introduced Welsh devolution 26 years ago, in times of more harmony and less scarcity, cooperation between the nations was probably not envisaged in this form. On Saturday, so that the capital's police custody system was not overwhelmed, those arrested were taken to 'makeshift outdoor processing centres', the Observer reported – as if during a general breakdown of law and order. Some of those released on bail then reportedly went back to the protest. 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This amendment to the 2000 Terrorism Act – a less benign legacy of Blair than devolution – states that anyone who 'wears, carries or displays an article' publicly, 'in such a way… as to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a member or supporter of' Palestine Action could be jailed for up to six months; and anyone who 'invites support for' the organisation could be jailed for up to 14 years. Authoritarianism and austerity have risen together in Britain, as the relatively generous public spending of the Blair years has receded and new waves of radical activism have formed over the climate crisis and the destruction of Palestine. Yet the possibility that austerity will make authoritarianism unaffordable, with too much of the government's funds swallowed up by the security state, does not seem prominent in Labour's thinking. The fact that Keir Starmer is a former director of public prosecutions and that the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has for many years been one of parliament's leading authorities on national security, has given them a lot of faith in law-and-order solutions to political problems. The Parliament Square protesters took a different view. They had been advised by Defend Our Juries not to give quotes to journalists, to avoid distracting from the protest's focus on the Palestine Action proscription and the genocide in Gaza. Yet the dozen protesters I spoke to informally all talked about Britain's police and politicians without the slightest deference, as part of a system that was failing, practically and ethically, to address our era's escalating crises. As the arrests went on and on, through the hot afternoon and into the evening, many of the protesters barely moved, but kept facing the same way, sitting on the ground with their placards carefully displayed and their backs to the Houses of Parliament. Partly, this was to provide a globally resonant image, but it was also to dramatise their rejection of the will of the Commons, where only 26 MPs voted against Palestine Action's proscription last month. Parliament likes to see itself as a historic defender of freedom and liberty, yet when panics about subversive groups are under way, its liberalism often evaporates. While the Commons narrows its views in times of crisis, the electorate sometimes does the opposite. Half of those arrested in the square were aged 60 or older – usually the most politically conservative demographic. Many had had middle-class careers in public service. Chatting among themselves on the grass in the quieter moments between police surges, they could almost have been taking a break between events at a book festival. One woman sat on a camping stool, wearing a panama hat. When I introduced myself, she said: 'I don't like the Guardian, I read the Telegraph.' The last time Labour was in office, opposition to its more draconian and militaristic policies also emerged across the political spectrum. The more rightwing members of this opposition can be questioned: are they as outraged when Tory governments support wars or suspend civil liberties? My sense is not. But either way, broad opposition erodes a government's legitimacy. At the 2005 election, after the Terrorism Act and the Iraq war, Blair still won, yet with almost a third fewer votes than when he came to power. With Labour more unpopular now, Starmer can less afford to alienate anti-war voters – much as his most illiberal subordinates might want to. Yet any electoral consequences from the scenes in Parliament Square, and from likely sequels, are hardly the only things at stake in the Palestine Action controversy. At mid-afternoon on Saturday, with the police cordon tightening around us, I got talking to two elderly protesters who had watched people being arrested beside them. 'I'm in two minds about carrying on with this,' one of them said, opening and closing her piece of cardboard with its illegal message. Defiant earlier, she now seemed frightened. The legally safe space for protest in Britain is shrinking again. Meanwhile in Gaza, there's no safe space for anything at all. Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
