Voters welcome the fact net migration has halved but still think it is too high, polling shows.
The survey from the More in Common think tank also found that voters do not think Labour was responsible for the fall in net migration, despite Sir Keir Starmer claiming credit for it.
It comes as Labour is facing a challenge from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which called for a “freeze” in “non-essential” immigration in its general election manifesto.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics last month showed net migration fell to 431,000 in the year ending December 2024, compared with 860,000 in the year ending December 2023.
The poll by More in Common, which involved 2,000 people from 23-26 May, found 51 per cent of people thought the reduction was “a good thing for the UK”, 21 per cent thought it was “neither a good thing nor a bad thing”, while 10 per cent thought it was a “bad thing”.
However, most Britons think the numbers are still too high. Fifty-seven per cent said the net migration figure of 431,000 was too high, while only 16 per cent thought it was “about right” and 8 per cent thought it too low.
The ONS said the reduction was driven by a fall in people coming to work and study, particularly student dependants, as a result of visa changes which were brought in by Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government.
But after the migration figures were published, Starmer caused controversy with a post on X which implied Labour had been responsible for the reduction. He said: “We have nearly halved net migration in the last year.”
The polling by More in Common shows that few give the current Labour Government credit for the reduction, with only 13 per cent of Britons saying that Labour was responsible.
However, the polling also makes poor reading for the Tories – who presided over net migration peaking at 906,000 – with just 17 per cent crediting them for the latest decrease.
Labour have said there is further to go on reducing migration, with Starmer outlining a range of additional curbs last month.
Ed Hodgson, associate director at More in Common, said: “With immigration increasingly a top concern for voters, it is no surprise that the public have responded positively to this fall in net migration.
“But the Labour Party should not necessarily rest assured that this fall means that they have tackled the issue in the mind of voters – few Britons think that Labour is solely responsible for this fall and our research elsewhere shows that the public don’t think Labour are interested in bringing down immigration.
“The next question is whether Labour can meet the public’s high demand for stronger action on immigration, while maintaining their broad coalition of voters which is currently spilling out on left and right.”
While the majority of net migration is accounted for by legal migration, the Government is facing rising pressure on the issue of small boats illegally crossing the Channel.
On Saturday, 1,194 people arrived in 18 small boats – the highest number of migrants recorded on a single day so far in 2025.
On Sunday, the Defence Secretary John Healey was asked about the crossings on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuennsberg. “There’s no overnight solution for this, the truth is that Britain lost control of its borders over the last five or six years,” he said.
He went on: “We’ve now got an agreement and cooperation with the French to change their rules to allow the police to be able to disrupt these gangs and these smugglers when they’re in the water not just on the shore.
“What we now need is to work more closely with the French to persuade them to put that into operation.”
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