Keir Starmer Press Conference LIVE: Prime Minister to address nation in response to record migration numbers

The magnitude of the inflows – the peak of which is roughly equivalent to adding two cities the same size as Leicester in one year – immediately sparked a new political row.

The numbers of people coming from outside the EU have skyrocketed since 2021, after the Brexit agreement came into force.

The five largest sources of immigration have been India, Nigeria, Pakistan, China and Zimbabwe.

In the year to June 2023, 268,000 arrivals came from India alone.

Kemi Badenoch gave a major speech last night to insist that the Conservatives would not allow Britain to be treated as a “hotel” for immigrants.

But Labor said it was “clearing up the mess” left by the previous government.

The UK’s net immigration record has been broken again, with 906,000 people now thought to have been added to the population in a single year.

Major revisions to official data show the extraordinary milestone was reached in the year to June 2023, with numbers remaining at historically unprecedented levels.

Official data covering the 12 months to June this year shows that long-term immigration was 728,000 more than those who left the country. In itself, that was almost as much as the previous record.

But the Office for National Statistics has dramatically raised the bar, with net migration for the year to June 2023 now thought to have been 166,000 people up from the initial estimate of 740,000.

Keir Starmer called a Downing Street press conference after new figures revealed net migration to the UK hit a record 906,000 in 2023.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) indicated that the measure of the difference between the number of people arriving and leaving the country peaked higher than previously thought in the 12 months to June last year, after being revised upwards by 166,000 from the initial estimate of 740,000.

The estimates, which cover the administration of the previous Conservative government before the general election, have since fallen by 20% and stood at 728,000 in the final period of the year to June 2024.

Meanwhile, the cost of the UK asylum system has risen to £5bn, the highest level of spending on record and an increase of more than a third in a year, according to separate Home Office data published at the same time. .