Emma Revell: Britain has had a demographic revolution – and it’s worth looking at who’s coming in and who’s leaving | Conservative Home

Emma Revell is External Affairs Director at the Centre for Policy Studies.

When people first started using the phrase ‘Boriswave’ to describe Britain’s record-breaking migration numbers, the left got almost as huffy as Boris Johnson himself. It was, we were told, a term that had emerged from ‘the far right’, or ‘the extremely online right’, or even ‘the online far right’.

Such a debate has always seemed a bit silly.

Sure, ‘Boriswave’ is a bit cringe. But what else could we possibly call a situation where between 2021 and 2024 – the period over which the post-Brexit immigration system came into force – Britain saw an inflow of 4.8 million people?

The latest data from the ONS, released earlier this week, suggests that we are living through the most dramatic demographic transformation in modern British history. Indeed, in terms of its scale, the migration surge of the early 2020s likely surpasses any demographic event in modern British history.

But the most extraordinary thing about this transformation, as my colleague Karl Williams argues in a new briefing from the Centre for Policy Studies, is how much is still unknown.

Revised data, produced by the Office for National Statistics using new methodology, shows that from 2021 to 2024, 4.18 million non-British nationals arrived, while roughly 1.26 million left. The result was net migration of roughly 2.55 million. This net inflow is equivalent to around 4.4 per cent of the UK population at the end of 2020 – meaning that one in every 25 people in the UK today has arrived in the last four years.

To frame it another way, population data from the Bank of England and the Official for National Statistics (ONS) shows that 2022, 2023 and 2024 were the three fastest years for population growth since the baby-boom of the 1940s. One of them, 2022, saw the fastest rate of population growth since 1828. And in terms of raw numbers of new arrivals, it’s hard to find anything in the historical record to match.

Or here’s another way of putting it.

According to census data, it took the 20 years between 2001 and 2021 for the foreign-born share of the population to rise from 8 to 16 per cent – itself an unprecedented scale of transformation. In just four years, the Boriswave has likely pushed it close to 20 per cent.

Or take emigration.

Anecdotal evidence has long suggested that talented young Britons, particularly the ambitious and highly mobile, were leaving the country in growing numbers, seeking better wages, lower taxes, cheaper housing, and a better quality of life. (And of course, better weather.)

Until now, official data appeared to downplay this phenomenon. Yet the new ONS revisions reveal that the exodus has been much larger than previously understood.

It was previously estimated that 332,000 British nationals emigrated between 2021 and 2024. The revisions now show that the real figure was closer to 992,000. That is an average of 679 Britons leaving the country every single day. And with only 623,000 returning, the net outflow of British nationals over the period was 368,000. The pace is accelerating, too: net emigration rose by 40 per cent between 2022 and 2024.

This raises two huge policy issues.

The first is the sheer scale of demographic transformation that is occurring. Even at the migration levels of the 2010s, Britain’s public services, housing supply and infrastructure have all struggled to keep up with demand.

But the other issue is that it’s impossible to set policy for a country if you don’t actually know who’s in it.

In terms of emigration, for example, there increasingly appears to be a genuine, modern brain drain of our youngest and brightest, often those with some of the highest earning potential or entrepreneurial ambition which they consider impossible to realise within the current domestic policy landscape. And yet until a few days ago, our official statistics barely registered it.

Of course, it’s little wonder the numbers weren’t reliable when the data capture relied mostly on people with clipboards approaching travellers at airports and asking them if they were leaving for good or just popping off on their holidays.

As Karl argues in our briefing, migration affects every corner of public policy. Tax revenue, school places, transport planning, interest rates, NHS staffing requirements, local authority funding – they all depend on understanding who lives in the country, where they live, and what they are doing.

If we are dramatically mismeasuring population change, then our budgets, forecasts and government strategies are being built on sand.

The collapse of survey-based labour market data after the pandemic – especially the Labour Force Survey – has only compounded this blind spot. Policymakers have effectively been steering the economy without reliable instruments.

If Britain is to have any hope of rebuilding trust in its migration system, reviving long-term economic planning, or even understanding the pressures communities face, policymakers must treat this as the statistical emergency it is.

Whatever one’s views on migration itself, the facts are now irrefutable. Even Labour has had to admit we have lost control of our borders, leading Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to announce what they claim is ‘the most significant reform to our migration system in modern times.’

Of course, the Conservatives have thus far struggled to hold the government to account on its migration failings. It’s all too easy for others to point out – fairly – that this all started on their watch. It’s there in that word ‘Boriswave’ (though Boris himself has done his best to lay the blame elsewhere).

Regaining credibility from the Opposition benches is difficult, with no actual levers to pull to show your ideas work.

But the Tories can start that work of rebuilding credibility by holding the Government, and statistics bodies, to account – and by backing credible reforms to data-gathering procedures. They could even go further, as some have suggested, and make the case for an emergency census in 2026: at the time of the last census in 2021, the argument was made that the lockdown measures in place at the time would lead to an inaccurate picture, and so it has emphatically proved.

This week the ONS effectively announced that Britain has undergone a demographic revolution. Only now are we beginning to understand what has happened.

For the state to plan, govern and build with competence, we need a clear, granular, credible demographic picture. Without it, we are left debating migration policy – and all the many policy consequences that flow from it – in the dark.