Immigration was already tumbling from record highs before Labour took power, it was revealed today.

Official figures showed net long-term inflows were 431,000 in the year to December, compared with 860,000 across 2023. 

Numbers had dropped to 739,000 in the year to last June - just before the election - with the peak remaining 906,000 in the 12 months to June 2023.

The Tories said the ONS data demonstrated their curbs were already having an impact - although the level in 2024 was still roughly equivalent to the population of Leeds. 

Separate figures from the Home Office showed 32,245 asylum seekers were housed in hotels as of the end of March this year - despite Keir Starmer's vow to shut them down.    

The PM unveiled a crackdown on legal immigration last week, warning that failure to control the system risked turning Britain into an 'island of strangers'.

Downing Street was forced to deny angry comparisons from MPs that it was an echo of Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech.

Director of population statistics at the ONS Mary Gregory said: 'Our provisional estimates show net migration has almost halved compared with the previous year, driven by falling numbers of people coming to work and study, particularly student dependants. This follows policy changes brought in restricting visa applications.

'There has also been an increase in emigration over the 12 months to December 2024, especially people leaving who originally came on study visas once pandemic travel restrictions to the UK were eased.'

It was the biggest calendar-year drop since the early stages of the pandemic when net migration fell from 184,000 in the year ending December 2019 to 93,000 in the year ending December 2020.

The numerical drop was the largest for any 12-month period, with the ONS pointing to falling numbers of people coming to work and study in the UK.

Long-term immigration fell below one million for the first time in around three years.

That was estimated to be 948,000 in the year ending December 2024, down by almost a third from 1,326,000 in the previous 12 months and below a million for the first time since the 12 months to March 2022.

Emigration rose by around 11 per cent to an estimated 517,000 for the year to December, up from 466,000 in the previous year.

People leaving the UK has returned to a similar level to the year ending June 2017.

There was a 49 per cent decrease in 2024 in the number of non-EU+ nationals arriving in the UK as the main applicant on a work visa, along with a 35 per cent fall in those coming as work dependants.

The number of non-EU+ nationals arriving as main applicants on a study visa dropped by 17 per cent, while there was a much larger fall of 86% in study dependants.

The drop is likely to reflect changes in migration rules introduced in early 2024 by the previous Conservative government, which included restricting the ability of most international students to bring family members.

Non-EU+ nationals refers to people who are not from the European Union or from Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.

The separate Home Office figures suggest visa numbers have continued to ease in the first part of this year.

Some 192,000 visas were granted to main applicants in all work categories in the year ending March 2025, 39 per cent down on the previous 12 months. However, that was still 40 per cent more than in 2019.

There were 23,000 visas under the 'Health and Care Worker' route, a huge 85 per cent drop from the peak in 2023.

The category including 'Skilled Workers' was down 23 per cent year on year .

'Temporary Worker' visas - including seasonal staff - saw a smaller 6 per cent reduction to 75,000, which is 83 per cent higher than in 2019.

There were 434,000 grants of a visa extension for work to main applicants in the year ending March 2025, nearly seven times the number in 2019. That was primarily down to use of the 'Graduate', 'Health and Care Worker' and 'Skilled Worker' routes.

The asylum backlog has also eased slightly from peaks last year.

The 32,345 in asylum hotels as of the end of March was down from 38,079 in December. But it remains higher than the 29,585 just before the election. 

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: 'This big drop in net migration has only happened because of tough action from the last Conservative government.

'But the figures are still far too high and need to go down a lot further. That's why we've proposed a binding annual immigration cap, set by Parliament at much lower levels. Labour voted against it last week and voted against it again yesterday.

'Labour scrapped our deterrents, binned the salary threshold rise, gutted deportation powers, and still parade around pretending their inaction is success. Only the Conservatives have a serious plan to slash migration a lot further.'

Former home secretary James Cleverly posted on X: 'This drop is because of the visa rule changes that I put in place. Labour will try to claim credit for these figures but they criticised me at the time, and have failed to fully implement the changes.'

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: 'The 300,000 drop in net migration since the election is important and welcome after the figures quadrupled to nearly a million in the last Parliament.

'Our Immigration White Paper sets out radical reforms to further reduce net migration.

'These figures show a big increase in returns of failed asylum seekers and foreign national offenders, record levels of illegal working penalties, and the asylum backlog and hotel use coming down.

'We are going even further by introducing new counter terrorism style powers to boost our border security and smash the people smuggling gangs responsible for their vile trade.'

The White Paper published last week pledged to toughen skills thresholds for visas, close the care work route, demand more fluent English, and make people wait a decade for full citizenship. 

However, Sir Keir has flatly refused to set any hard cap or targets, instead merely stating there will be a 'significant' in numbers fall by the next election.

The chair of the Migration Advisory Committee has estimated that the package means net long-term immigration will reduce from over 700,000 annually to 'under 300,000 and probably closer to 250,000'.

It was already projected to drop to around 340,000 in the coming years.

The PM's commitment to bring down numbers could also be affected by the youth 'free movement' scheme he agreed in principle with the EU this week.

Although the shape of the arrangement is yet to be thrashed out, Brussels officials are said to be pushing for hundreds of thousands of young people to be given the right to live and work in the UK for years. 

The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford said the 'record-breaking decline' in net migration was possible 'primarily because numbers had previously been so high'.

Its director, Dr Madeleine Sumption, said the economic impact of the fall 'is actually likely to be relatively small' because 'the groups that have driven the decline, such as study and work dependants, are neither the highest skilled, highest-paid migrants who make substantial contributions to tax revenues, nor the most disadvantaged groups that require substantial support'.

Her colleague Dr Ben Brindle, a researcher at the organisation, said net migration is likely to fall further still as the Conservative government's restrictions 'are not yet fully visible in the data' and Labour's recent policy proposals 'should reduce migration further'.

But he added: 'These declines will not necessarily take us to particularly low levels, by historical standards.'