Tony Blair debate shows UK net migration perception gap widens
tony blair sits in the middle of a wider political argument about migration, but the latest numbers are clear: UK net migration fell to 171,000 last year even as British Future found many voters still think it is rising. The gap between the official figures and public belief is now shaping how immigration is debated across parties.
British Future published its research ahead of the latest government migration figures, and the findings show how far opinion has drifted from the data. The group found that 67% of people with sceptical views on immigration believed net migration increased in 2025, while 37% of people with more liberal views thought the same. Among people who want immigration reduced, six in 10 believed numbers were still rising.
British Future and the migration data
Government figures published on Thursday showed net migration fell further to 171,000 last year. That followed a drop from a peak of 944,000 in the year to March 2023 to 204,000 in the year to June 2025. The Office for National Statistics said the continued fall was driven by a 47% decline in people from outside the EU arriving in the UK for work.
The same figures also showed that over the 12 months to December 2025, an estimated 813,000 people immigrated to the UK while 642,000 emigrated. British Future found that only 15% of people expected net migration to be lower in the next year, which suggests the public is still braced for a rise rather than a continued fall.
Sunder Katwala on the debate
Sunder Katwala, the British Future director, said: “It’s little wonder voters think net migration is going up when the only debate we have is about how to bring it down.” He also said: “We should be having a conversation about how to manage the pressures and gains of migration to Britain.”
British Future found another sharp mismatch in public estimates of who comes to the UK. People believed individuals seeking asylum accounted for 33% of immigration when the real figure was about 9%, and they believed people travelling to the UK for study accounted for 24% of immigration when the real figure was just over half. That kind of gap helps explain why the official fall has not yet changed the political mood.
Shabana Mahmood and Chris Philp
In November, home secretary Shabana Mahmood acknowledged a 69% drop in net migration in the 12 months to June 2025 and said the figure was the lowest annual figure since 2021. Mahmood said: “We are going further because the pace and scale of migration has placed immense pressure on local communities.”
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, responded to the fall by saying: “We need to go much further.” Nigel Farage falsely claimed the drop in net migration was largely a result of British emigration rather than the fall in overseas arrivals, adding another disputed claim to a debate already driven by competing interpretations of the same data.
British Future said mistrust on immigration is shared across all parties, and the latest figures give politicians a chance to talk about the size of the change rather than only the direction of travel. The next pressure point in the debate will be whether party leaders use the new 171,000 figure to narrow the perception gap or keep arguing over how much lower migration should go.
