Why government should introduce an annual Migration Plan

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Summary 

The government’s work to set out its plan for immigration in a white paper is an opportunity to more strategically reassess how migration policies are developed. In 2019, the Institute for Government made the case for government to publish an annual Migration Plan, setting out its objectives for the immigration system and how it aims to achieve them. 

A range of organisations across the political spectrum – including the Home Affairs Select Committee, ⁷¹ House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, Immigration policy: basis for building consensus: Second Report of Session 2017–19 (HC 500), 2018, https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmhaff/500/500. pdf  Labour Together, ⁷² Labour Together, A migration system that puts country first, December 2024, www.labourtogether.uk/all-reports/ a-migration-system-that-puts-country-first  IPPR, ⁷³ Griffith P and Morris M, An immigration strategy for the UK: Six proposals to manage migration for economic success, IPPR, December 2017, www.ippr.org/articles/an-immigration-strategy-for-the-uk  British Future, ⁷⁴ Rutter J and Carter R, The National Conversation on Immigration: Final report, British Future and HOPE not hate, September 2018, www.britishfuture.org/publication/national-conversation-immigration-final-report/  the Centre for Policy Studies ⁷⁵ Jenrick R, O’Brien N and Williams K, Taking Back Control: Why Britain needs a better approach to immigration, Centre for Policy Studies, May 2024, https://cps.org.uk/research/taking-back-control/  and Onward ⁷⁶ Tanner W and Chew R, Beyond the net migration target, Onward, July 2019, www.ukonward.com/reports/ beyond-the-net-migration-target/  – have called for similar proposals. Governments around the world already pursue similar models: the Canadian and Australian governments each carry out annual processes to broker between different immigration policy priorities and articulate a multi-year strategy for migration. New Zealand’s Residence Programme, too, offers ideas for how policies can be enacted in this space. 

This insight paper sets out in greater detail how an annual Migration Plan could work: what it should include, how it should be developed and how it could shape the public debate. It does not seek to propose specific policies relating to migration, but it outlines how government could strengthen the process for developing immigration policy to better achieve its overall objectives. 

We are grateful to Open Society Foundations for supporting our research into this topic.

Introduction 

Successive UK governments have failed to deliver their signature commitments on migration policy. Most have promised lower numbers only to see net migration rise, to reach record highs for most of the past five years. Numbers dropped in 2024 – for the first time since the pandemic – but were still well over double the figures seen throughout the 2010s. 

A mantra of recent governments has been to ‘take back control’. But with the release of each new record-breaking statistics those governments have instead opted to disown the system and promise to fix it. With the new post-Brexit migration system, the government does have control of immigration – at least, more than it did as an EU member. But so far the UK, under the Conservatives but also in the first year of Keir Starmer’s Labour administration, has failed to use its new powers to deliver a system that any government has been prepared to stand behind and argue for. 

International migration trends are largely out of the control of any one government. A global pandemic, shortly followed by conflicts abroad and labour market shortages at home, have all driven the rising numbers of people coming to the UK. Those numbers have started to fall, and in the coming years will almost certainly continue to, perhaps significantly, as the effects of the pandemic recede and humanitarian routes drawn up at short notice (most notably for people fleeing Ukraine and Hong Kong) pass their expected peaks. This will happen regardless of whether the government changes policy to actively try to reduce migration. 

But Labour, or indeed any future government, will struggle to deliver on any migration commitments if it continues to design policy in the incoherent and disconnected way that has become the norm in Whitehall. 

The immigration white paper, expected in the coming weeks, is this government’s opportunity to set out its strategy and policy for immigration in the UK. To deliver it, the government will need a system for regularly identifying and resolving the trade-offs between migration policy and wider government priorities – like growing the UK economy and ensuring public services can meet demand. 

It will need to be able to make choices on migration policy in the face of pressures from business, public sector leaders and international events. And it will need to succeed where previous governments have failed: making decisions that it can then justify or defend, in line with an overall strategy. 

To do this, the government should commit to a new annual Migration Plan.

The plan: what would be in an annual Migration Plan 

1. A set of clear objectives for the system. In theory, this could range from a broad set of principles to ‘rules’.
2. A multi-year planning horizon. Policy change can take 12–36 months to take full effect and in-year lurches should be avoided. The government should publish a three-year plan with annual updates.
3. An assessment of the current levels of migration by route. Setting out the key drivers broken down by route – that is, differentiating between people arriving on different kinds of work visas, as students or dependants, or via asylum or other humanitarian routes.
4. An assessment of the costs and benefits of migration by route. Clearly stating the implications of current migration levels for key areas like the economy, public services and housing (among others).
5. An overview of changes and forecasts by route. A set of policy changes and the expected impact on flows over the next three years.
6. Proposed cross-government policy changes. In light of either the cost/ benefit assessment or the changes to immigration routes, the government should set out the proposed wider policy changes necessary (for example, skills, public spending or foreign policy).

The process: how to develop an annual Migration Plan 

1. Developing a Migration Plan should be an annual process that kicks off at the same time every year. A focused process to develop policy based on evidence, launched like a spending review by the prime minister and home secretary.
2. Departments should be asked for long-term plans for sectors and shortages and held accountable for delivering them. This includes making representations for their sectors or policy areas, with proposals for plans to meet the government’s long-term migration objectives.
3. The plan should draw on independent evidence and analysis, in particular from the Migration Advisory Committee, Skills England and the Industrial Strategy Council. The MAC cannot make decisions for the government on migration policy, but it can inform the government’s choices with evidence, analysis and forecasts.
4. Devolved ministers, local leaders, business and civil society should have a clear route to feed in. This would include advisory groups and direct engagement ahead of policy changes.
5. The process should be owned by the Home Office and the Cabinet Office. The plan requires immigration, labour market and wider policy levers, which requires the support of the prime minister and the input of the wider cabinet. 

The public: how could an annual Migration Plan improve the quality of debate 

• The outline of the plan and the government’s position on migration should be set out in a public document. The current model of a minister doing a broadcast round in anticipation of the ONS net migration statistics, or responding to an urgent question in parliament, does not allow the government to proactively set out and justify its decisions.
• The plan should be debated in parliament. Like budget debates, this would offer democratically elected representatives a chance to debate the plan, and for the government to argue for it.
• Joint select committee scrutiny of the annual plan would allow for an in-depth assessment of immigration policy. The Home Affairs Committee would work with the other relevant select committees to jointly look at the plan.

Introduction: the problem with immigration policy making

Immigration policy in the UK is typically reactive. Changes often get made in response to one of three things: net migration figures released by the ONS; intense lobbying from a sector or civil society group; an international crisis. While the third is unpredictable, the first two follow an increasingly consistent pattern. 

For most of the year, government departments, businesses and trade associations, universities and civil society argue for changes to the immigration system – often to establish new routes or make existing routes easier to access – for example, lowering skill or salary requirements for certain groups like care workers. The focus here is not net migration but the government’s other objectives, from supporting the economy and public services to meeting foreign and international commitments. The Home Office usually says no. Number 10 sometimes overrules it and changes get made. 

Then the ONS releases its net migration statistics. The effectiveness of the entire immigration system gets boiled down to a single number, which since the late 1990s has always been in six figures. Governments have increasingly acted surprised, disowning the numbers and promising change. There follows a rushed policy process aimed at making the next six figure number a lower one. The policy response often contradicts or conflicts with wider government objectives or changes made in the previous year. 

The result is a system made up of knee-jerk policy changes that make it impossible for the government to set a coherent strategy for migration, let alone explain to the public. Key sectors of the economy face less certainty without an understanding of what the government’s future policy intentions may be. 

The focus on net migration statistics also means that the debate about immigration (outside of asylum and irregular migration) is framed by that single number. It is rarely put into context as part of a wider policy landscape, in recognition of potential trade-offs between migration policy and the government’s overall objectives. The home secretary is held accountable for a number that may ultimately be the consequence of decisions driven by other departments – a large driver of net migration growth in recent years has, for instance, been health and care workers that are key to the health department’s aim to bring down elective waiting lists. 

The system routinely results in outcomes that politicians, far from championing, feel like they have to distance themselves from. This undermines trust both in the system and in government. 

An annual Migration Plan 

It could work differently. The government could both assert and demonstrate much greater control over migration policy through a new annual Migration Plan. It would combine an overview of the numbers, broken down by different routes, with a set of objectives and interventions designed to balance the government’s objectives on migration with the wider considerations. It could combine short-term measures to address labour market shortages, with longer term skills and employment interventions to prevent continued reliance on the immigration system. It could also incorporate measures to mitigate the effect of migration on the demand for housing and public services. 

The plan could set out what it expects to happen to migration over the coming three to five years, based on the policy changes it has set out. It should set out a multi-year planning horizon, with the opportunity to make a small number of tweaks in each year’s plan if the government is confident the system is delivering or to make bigger changes if it thinks a new strategy or major policy change is necessary. But crucially those changes – big or small – should be considered in the round, not in a piecemeal way throughout the year.

The plan: what would be in an annual Migration Plan 

Despite how salient immigration can be as a policy issue, government rarely articulates its vision for the UK’s immigration system. Successive administrations have been guilty of talking a lot about immigration without really explaining it – issuing broad-brush aims, like reducing net migration to the tens of thousands, but failing to articulate clearly what their ultimate objectives are or how they seek to achieve them. When changes to immigration policy are announced, there is often little sense of how they relate to wider priorities for the labour market, the economy and public services. 

An annual plan would allow the government to assert greater control over immigration policy by regularly reviewing its own performance and setting out what it is doing in pursuit of its objectives. 

Once a year, the government should publish a multi-year Migration Plan – similar to those published by the Canadian and Australian governments (see Annex). It would be the government’s opportunity to set and refine its strategy, articulate the outcomes it is achieving, expose the costs and benefits, set its ambition for future years alongside a suite of policy changes that will help it deliver them. 

An annual Migration Plan should include: 

1. A set of clear objectives for the system 

The piecemeal way immigration policy has been made means that the government often does not set out clear objectives for the system. This can lead to contradictory policies: for example, a 2021 pledge to significantly increase the number of international students studying in the UK – designed to fund the higher education system, reduce fees for UK students and increase the UK’s soft power – was swiftly followed by a series of rapid crackdowns on student visa entitlements when those international students duly arrived and boosted the net migration figures. 

A clearly articulated set of objectives could help the government to ensure better coherence between its policies. Many of these objectives may relate to economic factors (including the government’s broader plans for the labour market or industrial strategy), but they should also consider wider social objectives or foreign policy goals. For instance, it could have an objective on the role of the migration system for the economy and public services, or in providing protection for those most vulnerable in the world. The plan should set out aims in both the short and long term. 

Canada has done this through legislation – the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act 2001 sets out 12 objectives for the immigration system, including developing the economy, reuniting families and successfully integrating permanent residents. The Canadian government publishes an annual plan that considers these objectives and the government’s more immediate priorities. 

Another option would be to set more specific binding objectives, similar to the government’s fiscal rules, to improve accountability and ensure a more stable environment for sectors that rely on immigration. ⁸⁸ Tanner W and Chew R, Beyond the net migration target, Onward, July 2019, www.ukonward.com/reports/ beyond-the-net-migration-target/  These could refer to particular sectors and visa routes, or wider areas like skills, fiscal contributions and social outcomes – for example, the government could commit to a proportional increase in high-skilled work visas issued over a three-year period. 

2. An assessment of the current levels of migration by route 

The plan should set out the number of people migrating to the UK by route – that is, differentiating between people arriving on different kinds of work visas, as students or dependants, or via an asylum claim or other humanitarian route (or others). At the moment, the focus is overwhelmingly on a single headline net migration figure, or at most, net migration by visa route. This obscures the different objectives of the system and how well the government is performing against them. 

Instead, the government should set out a more thorough assessment of the recent trends and total numbers coming through each route. It should be broken down beyond headline figures. For example, the numbers of people coming to the UK in different salary ranges, the number working in each sector – from agriculture to the NHS, the different mix of students coming over by course or study type, the different types of humanitarian and asylum routes – from in-country asylum claims to community sponsorship. It should recognise, as the Home Office does through its annual ‘Migrant journey’ report, what happens to people arriving by each route, such as the proportion who change to another visa route, return to their home country or are granted indefinite leave to remain. 

The Home Office publishes much of this data already, but in a range of spreadsheets and pivot tables. This would be a chance to, once a year, set out its assessment of those trends – and whether it is successfully meeting its wider policy objectives or if there are big increases or reductions that are a cause for concern. 

3. An overview of the costs and benefits of migration by route 

In addition to setting out the trends, the government should also set out its assessment of the costs and benefits of migration. The plan might, for example, talk about the fiscal contribution made by those arriving – and the different contributions made by different migration routes and skill levels. It could set out the total money raised by the immigration health and skills charges* and the contribution made to budgets as a result. Or it could talk about the impact of student migration on the finances of higher education institutions and UK citizens’ tuition fees. 

It could also set out the government’s best assessment of demand implications for housing and public services. The plan could explain how migration is contributing to wider priorities – for example, this government might refer to its missions and how the system is helping it to deliver them. As the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has noted in relation to family reunification, the government should also draw on analysis of the potential familial and social benefits of particular migration routes. ⁸⁹ Migration Advisory Committee, Annual Report, December 2020, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5fd88ff1e90e076631fb2285/Annual_Report_2020_BB.pdf  

4. Multi-year planning horizon 

As well as looking back at trends, the annual Migration Plan should look ahead and set out what the government thinks should happen – over a three- to five-year time horizon. It should not set targets or ambitions for 12 months’ time. 

Some changes to immigration policy, such as the Home Office tightening its scrutiny of visa applications, can have an immediate impact on migration figures. But others, like changes in earning thresholds or the creation of new visa routes, may take years to take full effect – they may require advance announcement and consultation, or it may be that an increase in people temporarily coming to the UK (such as for study) is followed by their emigration a few years later. Wider measures to respond to changes in immigration, such as ensuring that local areas have housing and public services in place to support their populations, also take time to bed in. 

Canada’s immigration levels plan is developed each year with a rolling three-year planning horizon, while the Australian government has recently moved from a one-year to four-year cycle, in part to ensure that housing supply can be considered in long-term migration policy making (an independent review of its migration system even suggested that a 10-year horizon would provide stability and predictability for businesses in their long-term investment planning). ⁹⁰ Australian Government Department of Home Affairs, Review of the migration system: Final report, March 2023, p. 46, www.homeaffairs.gov.au/reports-and-pubs/files/review-migration-system-final-report.pdf   ⁹¹ Australian Government Department of Home Affairs, ‘Migration Program planning levels’, 11 February 2025, retrieved 20 February 2025, https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/what-we-do/migration-program-planning-levels

So an annual UK Migration Plan should include a multi-year forecast of how policies will affect future migration levels. This would allow the government to respond meaningfully to the previous year’s migration flows, while giving predictability to the sectors affected by changes in policy. It would also improve the reliability of growth forecasts – from the government and the independent Office for Budget Responsibility – over the coming years, aligning them with what the government expects to happen to the working-age population. That forecast should be at minimum a three-year horizon, but should ultimately balance the government’s capacity to accurately model long-term migration flows with the need to mitigate the impact of changes on local areas and the economy. 

5. An overview of changes and forecasts by route 

The plan should set out the changes the government intends to make to immigration policy – such as changes to criteria, rules around dependants, or the creation or abolition of a route. It should also set out the requirements for the immigration system itself, such as caseworker resourcing or guidance for visa applicants. 

These changes should not be far-reaching every year – it would be impractical for the government to radically overhaul the immigration system on an annual basis. The plan should signal a medium- to long-term strategy, including any phased changes to policy, rather than just the plan for the coming year. But developing a plan on an annual basis would give the government the opportunity to act in response to trends in migration and regularly review the outcomes of migration policy in relation to its high-level objectives. 

The plan should model the expected impact of these changes on migration numbers over the forecast period, with an upper and lower bound overall and for each route. If the government chooses to set targets for a particular route, it should set out the forecasted range, informed by the independent analysis of the MAC. 

Asylum will be different. It is not possible to make reliable forecasts or set targets: asylum is a rights-based form of immigration determined by international law. As such, there is a case for removing asylum altogether from an annual Migration Plan. Ultimately, though, its inclusion is recommended. The asylum system is critical to public confidence in the migration system as a whole. Asylum should, however, be treated differently. Instead of publishing forecasts, the focus should be on reviewing trends and announcing policy changes agreed across departments – whether to do with international co-operation, processing or integration. ⁹² Savur S and Owen J, How the government can design better asylum policy, Institute for Government, December 2024, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/asylum-policy  The annual plan could include any target forecasts for resettlement, community sponsorship, or other humanitarian routes, over which the government has greater control. 

6. Targets or caps 

Some proposals ⁹³ Jenrick R, O’Brien N and Williams K, Taking Back Control: Why Britain needs a better approach to immigration, Centre for Policy Studies, May 2024, https://cps.org.uk/research/taking-back-control  for an annual plan have included a cap, either overall or for individual visa routes. This would send a clear political signal of control. In practical terms, it could be fairly easily implemented for some routes, such as for international students (if the government is willing to bear the consequences for the university sector). Australia allocates a set number of visas by route and New Zealand’s Residence Programme had caps on some routes, though in both countries many people granted permanent visas will have entered on temporary visas, which are uncapped and demand-driven. These caps therefore have little bearing on overall levels of net migration. 

But as part of the policy response, a cap can be an ineffective way to be selective about which people are able to migrate to the UK. Indeed, under the previous system from 2011 to 2020, there was an annual limit on the number of high-skilled visas that could be issued to non-EU workers. The MAC recommended that the cap be abolished, as it created uncertainty among employers and, if exceeded, would lead to inconsistencies in the criteria for who could come to the UK from month to month. If the monthly cap was reached then applications were ranked by type of occupation and salary levels, but if it was not reached then applications only had to meet the basic criteria to be accepted. ⁹⁴ Migration Advisory Committee, Review of Tier 2, December 2015, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7f48ede5274a2e87db4ebf/Tier_2_Report_Review_Version_for_Publishing_FINAL.pdf  The government therefore has to accept a trade-off: either it can have a clear and consistent criteria for who it wants to come to the UK, or it can consistently enforce a cap on numbers and have to decide on a case by case basis who gets to come; the two are not possible at once. ⁹⁵ Migration Advisory Committee, EEA migration in the UK: Final report, September 2018, p. 116, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5ba26c1de5274a54d5c39be2/Final_EEA_report.PDF  

The political signal of a target or cap is ultimately weakened if the government fails to meet it or is forced to relax the caps regularly to manage labour market or public service pressures. Caps have the most impact on demand-driven routes, and if enforced would mean the government would ultimately be excluding people who employers have signalled that they want to hire from abroad. In practice, the previous cap on high-skilled visas could be overridden – doctors and nurses were excluded from the limit in 2018 due to the workforce pressures faced by the NHS. ⁹⁶ Home Office, ‘Doctors and nurses to be taken out of Tier 2 visa cap’, 15 June 2018, www.gov.uk/government/news/doctors-and-nurses-to-be-taken-out-of-tier-2-visa-cap  

Fundamentally, an arbitrary numerical target for overall net migration is impractical. The government cannot significantly control emigration from the UK, nor how many UK citizens return from abroad. A headline target based on the overall number of people coming to the UK could also drive perverse incentives, as it fails to account for the benefits and costs of different types of immigration – on the economy, labour market, housing and public services. More specific targets, by route, could be more realistic under a Migration Plan, because policy interventions across Whitehall would contribute towards meeting them. 

If the government wishes to set targets, these should be banded forecasts by route, rather than a blunt instrument for the totality of net migration. And where targets relate to a particular sector’s immigration route (such as health and care), there should be a clear explanation of how cross-government policy changes will contribute towards meeting the target forecast. Canada’s Migration Plan sets a banded target for each of the three years of the forecast period, by route. But generally, Canada has sought to grow its permanent resident population, so target forecasts are useful largely as a way to plan the capacity the country needs to accommodate the population, rather than a policy measure to control numbers. 

7. Proposed cross-government policy changes 

As well as changes to the immigration system, the annual plan should cover wider changes to policy, co-ordinated across government, to support long-term objectives on migration. Those changes should include skills, labour market and workforce policies. For example, if the government wanted to reduce the number of people coming to the UK to work in health and social care, it could announce new domestic policies that improve working conditions or increase the training pipeline from within the UK. 

Those changes could also include citizenship and integration policies. For example, if different parts of the country had been disproportionately impacted by changing populations, the government could use existing schemes like the Controlling Migration Fund to support those areas to ease pressures on local services. The government could also consider policy changes relating to infrastructure and public services. 

In Canada, the government’s annual report to parliament on immigration refers to wider measures taken by the government to ensure that there is infrastructure in place to support a growing population – such as housing, education and health care policies. The Canadian government intends to move towards “a more integrated plan to coordinate housing, health care and infrastructure between federal government departments”. ⁹⁷ Government of Canada, ‘An Immigration System for Canada’s Future: A plan to get us there’, 15 November 2023, retrieved 20 February 2025, www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/campaigns/canada-future-immigration- system/plan.html  

Given the potential far-reaching public spending implications of these interventions, the UK government should ensure that its Migration Plan does not act as a secondary fiscal event. It could choose to develop the plan as part of the budget process, as in Australia, where the government models the impact of its migration programme on tax receipts and costs to relevant departments such as home affairs, education, health and social services. ⁹⁸ Commonwealth of Australia, Budget Paper No. 2, 14 May 2024, p. 8, https://budget.gov.au/content/bp2/download/bp2_2024-25.pdf  

But there are also benefits to developing the plan ahead of the budget, so that the government can ground its spending decisions in more robust OBR economic and fiscal forecasts as they relate to migration policy and the population. In this case, the government should ensure that the proposed wider policy changes feed into interdepartmental negotiations ahead of the following fiscal event.

How to develop an annual Migration Plan 

The gap in migration policy making is not just a clear strategy, but the machinery to execute it. Even if the government had clear objectives or fixed targets for each route, the chances of it successfully achieving them in the current system would be low. 

Migration policy changes, particularly on skilled workers and students, are requested by different departments and sectors all year round – submissions to the Home Office from other departments regularly number up to 100 each year. 

The problem is that decisions on migration are taken in isolation, in response to pressure – whether in the labour market or media. There is currently no forum in which the prime minister, home secretary, chancellor and other relevant ministers look at migration flows, the labour market data, the demands on the migration system and take a rounded judgment on what changes need to be made to hit their objectives – whether that is reducing or increasing different routes. There is also no forum in which the government reviews the trade-offs inherent in migration policy, such as whether to prioritise carve-outs for care visas or construction visas. 

Core to moving to an annual Migration Plan must be the annual planning process, in which the government starts with its objectives, and considers the different demands on the system in the round. There should be five key elements to that process. 

1. Developing the plan should be an annual process that takes place at the same time each year 

The prime minister, home secretary, chancellor and chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster should kick off the annual process at the same time each year with a meeting to assess the trends and set priorities. It should look at the latest visa and arrivals data alongside data on emigration, labour market performance and wider economic indicators. The prime minister and home secretary should then launch a process across government, much like the spending review, by setting out its objectives for the migration system. 

Those objectives could be high-level, such as increasing high-skilled immigration to the UK as a proportion of overall migration, filling short-term vacancies in high-priority sectors, reducing the reliance on the migration system for sectors facing chronic shortages, or promoting integration of people migrating to the UK. 

2. Departments should be asked for their long-term plans for shortages – and held accountable for delivering them 

Every department should be invited to make representations for, and provide evidence and analysis relevant to, their sectors. But crucially, they should also be asked to set out their plans for meeting the government’s migration objectives over the longer term, which may likely involve using policy levers outside of just the migration system to address labour shortages. At present, many departments are incentivised to seek better access to the system for their sector but not necessarily to then look at longer term changes to reduce reliance on overseas students or workers in future years. 

For example, the MAC published a report in 2021 recommending several changes to make it easier to access health and care visas. As part of that, it recommended the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) develop a workforce plan that would address the underlying problems that was driving greater dependence on the migration system in social care. The changes to the migration system were made, but the plan to address the underlying problems didn’t emerge. 

It will be easier for the government to develop workforce plans for certain sectors, such as health – which makes up a relatively large proportion of immigration to the UK compared to other countries. For other sectors, departments should identify the key areas where chronic skills gaps exist and work with businesses, training providers and local partners to ensure there is a long-term plan to meet the government’s aims on migration. For the higher education sector, the Department for Education (DfE) should explain how its approach to university funding models and international student immigration and emigration trends fit with the government’s migration policy objectives and aims for UK services exports. 

A new annual migration planning process should hold departments to account each year for the development and delivery of their plans to address labour shortages, in line with overall objectives for migration policy. 

3. The plan should draw on independent advice and analysis, particularly from the MAC, Skills England and the Industrial Strategy Council 

Alongside the inputs from departments, advice should be sought from key independent bodies. For example, the MAC should be asked to provide labour market analysis and forecast what different policy changes could mean for each migration route. Skills England should be asked to scrutinise and challenge proposals for long-term, chronic labour shortages to help mitigate the impacts of any restrictions on work migration. The Industrial Strategy Council should advise ministers on how the migration system can support its wider growth ambitions. 

The evidence should look at both the benefits and the costs of migration. For example, the MAC should be asked to further develop its evidence base on the fiscal contributions of migration by group, to feed into decisions and better inform the OBR’s modelling on migration and growth. The government should also support decision making with its assessment of the implications of migration for demand on public services and housing – if there is a case for government intervention, the migration planning process should kick that work off ahead of the next fiscal event. 

4. Devolved ministers, local leaders, business and civil society should be invited to contribute evidence for key decisions 

Business and civil society groups should be part of the discussion. This should be done in the first instance by the relevant departments: discussions with the DHSC should be informed by evidence provided by NHS Employers, for example; DfE with evidence from Universities UK. The existing structures on asylum policy should be used to discuss changes to resettlement and community sponsorship routes. 

At the moment, these groups often spend much of the year lobbying for changes and are, occasionally and often at short notice, invited to provide evidence to the MAC. A predictable annual rhythm would allow them to develop analysis that better supports decision making. The default should be a focused, predictable cycle of engagement. But the planning process could also choose to review in depth a small number of sectors of interest to the government that year – such as inviting analysis about how to attract overseas digital technology talent one year, and insights into green-skilled labour migration the following year. 

Devolved ministers and local leaders should represent their areas’ needs from the migration system and wider policy interventions. They could explain how migration fits into their aims for local growth and their local skills improvement plans. 

The government could further broaden its engagement to include an in-depth consultation with the public, including through deliberative exercises. It would not be practical to do this every year, but instead at regular intervals – every three to five years, say. That engagement could range between an assessment of the overall priorities for migration or drilling in to particular elements of the system where the government is considering wider reforms. For example, it could focus on the asylum system or integration and citizenship. 

5. The Cabinet Office should work with the Home Office to bring together the key decisions for the prime minister and cabinet 

With the input from the relevant departments and key independent advisers like the MAC, the Cabinet Office and Home Office should provide advice on the key decisions for the government. These should set out the choices and options for the cabinet in meeting its overarching objectives on migration. 

Those choices should not be just migration policy. It should be a mix of short-term migration measures and longer term changes on skills and other policy areas, which would allow the government to meet its objectives in the coming years. 

The prime minister, home secretary, chancellor and chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster should then meet, with other ministers as relevant, to decide what changes to make to deliver its objectives. 

Ultimately, this process should give the home secretary greater control over the migration system – removing the need for continual negotiations with individual departments (and/or No.10 and Treasury) and better enabling them to present the total requests on the system to the prime minister and cabinet.

The public: how to launch an annual Migration Plan 

For parliament, the press and the public, the moment to assess the performance of the migration system as a whole is often the twice-yearly release of the net migration system. There are exceptions: small boat crossings and incidents in the Channel often spark debate on the asylum system, or a major government white paper or legislation might see elements of the system discussed. But the regular ‘review’ of what is happening with migration in and across the UK is the ONS statistics release. 

These are released at 09:30 on a Thursday morning in late May and November. The government does not get to see the figures before they are released and does not know what they will be (the ONS ended pre-release access to official statistics in 2017). A minister is often sent out to radio and television studios in the morning just before the release, to try to answer speculative questions about a number that no one yet knows. Immediately after the number is released, the government is asked to respond – which in recent years has almost always been to commit to bringing the numbers down and an actual or implied criticism of the performance of the system. 

There are two fundamental problems with this approach when it comes to public trust in the system. The first is that for successive governments who have promised ‘control’, there is nothing about this process that demonstrates any level of control over the system. It is clear it does not know exactly what the numbers will be and so does not have a response lined up – either in terms of policy or objectives (other than just saying ‘lower’). 

The second problem is that it inevitably boils down the migration system to a single six-figure number. The ONS does provide more detailed analysis, including by country and broad migration type – work, study, humanitarian and so on – but the public debate narrows very quickly on the headline figure. 

The ONS does not, and nor should it, include analysis about the wider costs and benefits of migration: it is a statistical agency not an economic forecaster. The government is pursuing multiple policy objectives through its decisions in the migration system, from foreign policy (such as with its Ukraine and Afghanistan settlement schemes), to economic objectives (in bringing in foreign labour to address market shortages) to public service delivery (health and care visas). None of this is captured by that six-figure number. 

So, as well as using its strategy and stronger process to assert control over the migration system, an annual Migration Plan is an opportunity to demonstrate control. There are several ways to do that. 

1. The government publishes its Migration Plan on the same day or just in advance of the May or November net migration statistics

Above all, the key component would be a published annual plan setting out the key elements set out in this paper: the government’s objectives for the system; an assessment of performance broken down across and within different migration routes; analysis of the costs and benefits; a revised forecast and where relevant multi-year targets; and policy changes whether within the migration system or to related policy areas (skills or integration, and so on). 

Publication allows the government to set out how it has used the migration system over the last year, why it has done it in that way, and the changes it is making to deliver its objectives over the coming years. 

It should be a public government document that sets out the performance of the system. It should not be a report by the MAC, who can provide invaluable advice and analysis but, ultimately, the choice about what the migration system should achieve and how to change it is one for ministers.

 2. A debate in parliament 

Just as the chancellor sets out the government’s position on the economy to parliament at the budget, the home secretary could set out the government’s position on migration alongside the publication of an annual plan. 

Others, including the Centre for Policy Studies, have called for fixed votes on caps for each route. While caps can be an ineffective way to achieve objectives on migration (as outlined above), if the government wanted to pass primary legislation to make more binding commitments about each route, this would be the moment to do it. Labour Together has called for emergency debates to review changes if the government looks to exceed its targets; that too could be in addition to this annual debate. 

3. Joint select committee scrutiny of the annual Migration Plan 

Parliament should be able to scrutinise the plan in detail. Given the range of policy objectives and interests within the migration system, the appropriate route to do this scrutiny should be a joint select committee inquiry, which includes members from all the relevant select committees – chaired by the Home Affairs Committee but with representation from Treasury, Business and Trade, Education, Health and Social Care, and others as relevant. 

The committee could take evidence from the Home Office, but also from those employers, civil society groups and wider interested parties on the implications of the system for their sectors.

Conclusion 

An annual Migration Plan would allow the government to move on from the incoherent way immigration policy has been made in the past. It would be a shift from an antagonistic relationship between the Home Office and other departments to a more co-ordinated approach, weighing up the interests and evidence across government to produce a collectively agreed strategy. It would be a more predictable approach to developing policy, giving the certainty that employers, universities and trade associations need. 

Lastly, it would build credibility by putting the plan at the forefront of the migration debate, allowing for a more honest assessment about the pros and cons of migration as part of the government’s wider agenda.

Annex