Up next in 10
Britain’s migration numbers have fallen dramatically - but why are Labour barely talking about it? Andrew Marr is joined by Fraser Nelson, columnist for The Times, and Peter Hyman, former Advisor to both Keir Starmer and Tony Blair, and Mike Tapp, Minister for Migration and Citizenship, to break down the sharp decline in net migration, the political implications for Labour and Reform UK, and the deeper crisis facing Britain’s “bedroom generation” of young people disconnected from work and education. 00:00 | Andrew's intro 02:30 | Fraser Nelson kicks in the debate 07:30 | Peter Hyman joins the panel 15:50 | Mike Tapp concludes with the government's perspective. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #andrewmarr #ukpolitics #migration #netmigration #politics #uknews #news #debate #immigration #keirstarmer #starmer #reform #reformuk #nigelfarage #farage #labourparty #LBC LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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0:00
One of my favourite quotes about politics, which I think about a lot
0:04
comes from the brilliant, almost forgotten novelist Joyce Carey. One of his characters says this
0:10
The only good government is a bad government in a hell of a fright
0:16
All right, cynical, but also more than a grain of truth. I don't know about good, but today's government, for obvious reasons
0:24
is in a hell of a fright. and yet the world beyond Westminster suggests there is a case for keeping its nerve
0:33
Immigration, which the public wants to come down, is coming down sharply
0:39
Illegal migration, which the public wants to end, is coming down sharply
0:45
The huge threat of a generation choosing welfare, not work, is at last being grappled with seriously
0:53
Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, today made a useful stab at helping people over the coming cost of living crisis caused by the Iran War
1:03
There were some gimmicky things to help out families going to summer theme parks, but also the lifting of tariffs on 100 foodstuffs and free bus travel for children in England during August
1:16
Because of the war, inflation is likely to go up again, but the latest figures show it came down more than expected last month to 2.8%
1:26
Now, I am not going to rile you by provocatively suggesting that we are being governed superbly well or that everything is suddenly tickety-boo
1:36
But below the surface of Labour's leadership turbulence and bad governance, some things are going better
1:44
And this summer, we have the chance which we ought to take to look at the big policy challenges from the labour market to tax
1:51
before which we as a country do not need to surrender or give up
1:56
So let's begin tonight with the most important change we learned about today
2:00
the radical fall in migration, both legal and illegal, and what it means for politics and the economy
2:05
Fraser Nelson of The Times has been writing about this today, And we'll then talk about the problem of the nearly million neets the people aged between 16 and 14, not in education or employment or training, many of them on benefits
2:19
Peter Hyman used to work at Number 10 in the Blair days and then became a teacher
2:23
And he has been crisscrossing the country, talking to young people and trying to come up with some answers
2:28
Welcome to you both. Fraser, let's start with the migration numbers. These are pretty dramatic. They're really big
2:34
They're extraordinary. We find out that migration halved over the course of last year
2:38
And it's now down more than 80% from its peak under the Conservatives
2:43
Now, this is really a far sharper decline than anybody had expected
2:48
And that makes you wonder, might it hit net zero this year? There are some projections that it might do
2:53
Now, also, when you look at migration, broadly speaking, there's three types of migration. There's students, they're counted as migrants here
2:58
they stay more than 12 months. Then there's asylum, humanitarian, we had a lot of Ukraine, Hong Kong and the small boats
3:05
But when you look at basic migration, what's remaining? That is no doubt to the tens of thousands
3:10
And these are people coming in on work visas to work in the care industry or wherever
3:14
Exactly. And they're bringing their family members or whatever. But we're talking about not students, not their asylum or humanitarian
3:20
The basic migration is now 75,000 last year. That is the tens of thousands the Tories often talked about, but never actually delivered
3:27
And yet the policies the Conservatives finally delivered are a big part of this story
3:32
They've been kept going by Labour. But Labour have also really kind of squeezed the work visa issue about as hard as it can be done
3:39
Shabana Mahmood in particular. Yeah, when the Tories worked out what was happening, they hit the emergency brakes
3:44
But there's always a lag for this to happen. So a large chunk of this is Tory policies kicking in after the election
3:50
But another large chunk is Shabana Mahmood, who has been really quite tough on work visas
3:55
has really cut them down hugely. And it seems quite determined to get this under control
4:00
Employers have been complaining. and the Home Secretary has said, well, if you can't find workers, why don't you pay more
4:05
trade more, because there's a lot of unemployed people in this country. We'll come on to talk about them very shortly
4:10
One of the arguments against all of this, you read online in particular
4:14
is that actually it's about the huge numbers of people leaving the country
4:18
We're talking net migration figures, so huge numbers of people coming in, huge numbers of people now leaving
4:23
But as far as I can see, the numbers of people leaving the country have not gone up, they've fallen
4:28
Well, that's right. I mean, it is stable. Brits have always been a globally minded people
4:32
You go and work abroad for a while, this has always been the case
4:36
But there is no surge in the number of Brits leaving the country
4:40
What's happened is the ONS has got a better way of counting them. And they said that actually this figure is bigger than we thought but there no suggestion that it getting any bigger So this is normally And the other thing of course is what we seeing is the huge wave of migration unwinding And that will include people like Poles for example
4:56
who may have a British passport going back to Poland. Poland is now a far richer country
4:59
and is taking back a lot of the people it gave us 20 years ago. So up to this point, we've been talking about legal migration
5:06
Let's talk a little bit about the boats and people coming over, because again, not quite halved
5:11
but it's come down very sharply given the same period last, compared to the same period last year
5:15
Broadly speaking, it's down about 30%, 40% on where things were last year. If you look at the first half of this year
5:20
it's probably one of the lowest number of small boat arrivals for the last three or four years
5:26
So that is, you know, Schoenberg has been doing... Sorry, and sending people home, deportation, that's also up
5:32
It is up quite sharply, but it's still nowhere near as high as it was
5:35
when Peter was number 10 working for Tony Blair. I mean, Blair was the arch deporter compared to nowadays
5:40
So it is lower than it was under David Cameron. So there's a lot. By the way, there's a massive queue of people waiting to be deported who've come out of prison, who have absolutely no grounds to stay here at all
5:51
But they can't get organized enough to send them out to the country. So if then Rachel Reeves wanted, she could put a lot more money into the deportation machine and those numbers could go up without any kind of friction at all
6:02
Final, final point, the politics of all of this. Are you surprised that we're not hearing more about it from the Prime Minister
6:08
He's mentioned it, but he hasn't been jumping up and down, waving his arms around. Oh, it's almost the success to dare not speak its name
6:16
I mean, Keir Starmer seems to think that controlling migration is kind of right wing agenda
6:20
And now this is, of course, if I was a reform facing Labour MP, I'd be shouting this from the rooftops
6:25
I would be saying that we have controlled immigration. Because if you look at the language there, people talk about uncontrolled mass migration
6:31
Labour can't control the borders. Well, not only are they controllable, but they are actively being controlled
6:35
And that therefore suggests that those who think we need an ICE-style sort of semi-paramilitary operation, grabbing people from their communities and putting them into huge camps and then deporting them, are just out of date
6:48
Well, yes, but that doesn't mean to say people don't want it. They do. Now, for this message to get across, people have to hear it
6:54
If Labour aren't going to talk about their success, then who is? The Tories? Reform
6:58
No, Labour's got to send this message itself, and they can't blame people for not hearing a message it's not making in the first place
7:04
Very, very good point. Peter Hyman, let me come on to, you know, some of the people who are going to be very directly affected by these numbers, because presumably the fewer people coming in on work visas, the more jobs there are for the generation that you have been focusing on
7:19
Let me just rewind a little bit. You've been going around the country talking to so-called NEETs
7:24
There's nearly a million, 900-something thousand NEETs, people not in education, training or employment around the country
7:31
And there's been a kind of national hysteria. I mean, not hysteria is perhaps unfair
7:35
about the number of those people going on to benefits at the moment. What have you learned in your travels that makes you rethink
7:41
Well, I started a little bit with the idea of the snowflake generation
7:45
ringing in my ears because the media portray that a lot. But we spoke to 400 young needs across the country
7:51
And I don't think I met a single snowflake. What I met was a lot of young people who are applying for hundreds of jobs and being what they call ghosted
8:00
They're not even given a response at all. There's a lot of them who have got multiple challenges
8:06
We spoke to those who've been in care, those who are carers, those who are young offenders, those who've got neurodiversity
8:15
So there's a whole set of issues that they're facing. They've also, I think, uniquely, so some people say, well, this comes around in a cycle
8:23
Uniquely, they've had the sort of long shadow of COVID. I was going to ask about that
8:27
This is the COVID generation. And they've had the social media addictions
8:32
So one of the things we talk about is this sort of bedroom generation, where that cocoon of the bedroom means if you've had a setback and you've maybe not got a job or lost a job
8:43
you're then in your bedroom. And I think... So you've got the bedroom generation
8:48
and you've got what you call the rejection economy at the same time. Yeah, exactly
8:52
The rejection economy is how many times they apply and the shrinking
8:56
and it's linked to what we've just been talking about, the offshoring of jobs, entry-level jobs
9:02
means it's very hard now to get into the labour market. AI is now taking away other jobs at the same time
9:09
And I think the most shocking thing of all of it, going back to the bedroom generations, we talked we said to a 23 year old quite regularly walk us through what you've been doing since you
9:18
were 16 and they would say well i went to college for three months and then i dropped out and then
9:22
i tried a little bit of work and then we said and then what and they would say nothing and we would
9:27
hear that they've been in their bedroom literally for four five six years without the system yeah
9:33
winkling them out and when we visited the netherlands as an example they have a far better tracking system so they don lose sight of every young person and their ways of pulling them back into opportunity We talking about 12 of that entire generation
9:49
13-14% and to give you a comparison, Netherlands is 4%. The more I hear about it, the more I think this is one of the great national tragedies unfolding in front of our eyes
9:59
And in your report, you're quite critical of the school system as part of the trouble
10:03
Well, I'm a former headteacher, but I've never really talked to those in their late teens and early 20s looking back at school
10:10
Now, of course, young neats are those who, by definition, have done less well in the main, not all of them, less well at school
10:17
But I wasn't prepared for the vitriol and the hatred and the scarring for this group of people of school, the bullying that they'd faced
10:27
the fact that they were in the ninth set out of nine in mass and labelled a retard by their classmates
10:32
The fact that they're put in isolation on their own in a sort of cupboard for minor infringements of school rules
10:41
The fact that most importantly, there are no pathways that are really championed at school other than university
10:47
So they don't really know what their life's prospects are going to be
10:51
And this adds up to a really painful childhood for a lot of young people
10:55
I want to pull the conversation back now to politics more generally, because this is about, you know, getting into this is about political leadership
11:02
and actually grappling with the problem at number 10. And I'd just like to talk to both of you about where you think we are
11:11
in terms of the National Party, because we have a prime minister who seemed to be hanging by a thread
11:17
what, only a few days ago, and now with a bit better news, he's got his self-confidence back
11:22
He was stronger in the House of Commons. We've got Wes Streeting putting up some interesting ideas
11:26
and we've got whatever's going on in Makerfield we can't talk about for Ofcom reasons
11:30
But Fraser, let's start with you. What do you think? Where do we are? Well, Labour does have a good story to tell. It struggles to tell
11:37
Funny, if you want to get a good news story from the Labour Party, it's almost the Labour government
11:41
It's almost like being an investigative journalist getting a scandal from the Tories. You have to be Sherlock Holmes to find out what they're doing right in this government
11:49
And they hate it when you do. But there are things. When you look at the news, for example, Alan Milburn's coming up with a review on this, a really serious review
11:57
You've got the Work and Pensions Secretary, Pat McFadden, is coming out with a really serious proposal on welfare reform
12:04
The intellectual work is being made, which is why my heart sinks of the idea of yet another prime minister
12:09
who will drop everything and we go back to zero again. I mean, these problems are huge because we've had five prime ministers
12:15
in five years or about to, and they keep turning. But we can see things going right
12:20
There's a lot going right in the country. And, of course, it's difficult to, again
12:24
if the prime minister can communicate that, that nobody else is going to do it on his behalf
12:28
But what you're saying, Andrew, about the needs being a calamity, I completely agree there. When you look at the number of people
12:33
trooned from school, Peter, I was looking at these figures, they're pretty much doubled. And we're talking hundreds of thousands of kids
12:39
who are absent from 10% or more lessons. When it comes to primary school
12:43
there's something like tens of thousands, 30,000 kids who are missing more than 50% of primary school
12:49
Now, what do we think is going to happen to these kids? And what do we do
12:53
We don't go after them. Nobody goes after the parents. We just write them off. We pretend it's not happening
12:57
So I see an almost Dickensian divide opening up in our society
13:02
But if Bridget Philipson comes onto a show and she wants to talk about this
13:06
we know what's going to happen. We're going to ask her again and again about whether it's Wes Streeting
13:10
or Andy Burnham or whoever she wants as the next prime minister. To what extent do you worry, Peter, you've been inside the machine
13:16
that the entire machine is now kind of frozen, paralysed by what's going on
13:20
I do worry about this because although today we've talked about some good news stories
13:24
and that's great for the government. This is all about building up a legacy of real achievement
13:29
Now, it's not enough, as Fraser says, if you can't tell the story properly
13:33
But you do need... I mean, these are some quite good stats. In a lot of areas, the problem is not
13:39
that there aren't some individual good policies. It's what I call the sort of welly problem
13:43
They're not giving it enough oomph to really push it and drive it and get more done
13:49
So in the case of education, which you named, there's a curriculum and assessment review that's happened
13:53
that have some quite good stuff in it, but didn't go nearly far enough
13:56
for the sort of things that we've just talked about. In a sense, what you're saying is it's by old-fashioned political leadership
14:02
we need better leadership. Now, maybe Keir Starmer can turn himself around
14:06
maybe he can't, I don't know. When you look at the field in front of you
14:10
do you see people that you'd like to see take over? Well, it's not for me to say that now
14:15
but you've got, in Wes and Andy, you've got two people who can tell a story
14:21
They're good communicators. They are good communicators They have got ideas And that should be played out as to you know they ought to be tested both of them as to have they really got the strength of purpose as well as the ideas to govern the country And I mean I share your view about changing prime ministers but for Labour MPs they
14:42
also got to make a very calculated judgment because they should not be losing with a big
14:47
majority to reform. So if their calculation is we're going to lose as we are with reform, they will make
14:52
a move. Fraser? And of course, it's not just prime ministers, it's cabinet members who get them scrambled
14:57
as well. And all of this work gets lost. And now, of course
15:01
I can see, and it's funny, listening to the Labour Party now, it's like listening to the Tories
15:05
we've got this good communicator, somebody else will come along. What the party sees is
15:09
sort of the country sees, is a party that was given a massive majority a couple of years ago
15:13
behaving as worse as the Tories did. So people almost lose faith in their ability for votes to make a difference
15:20
I mean, for Labour to get in less than two years to where the Tories got after 13, it's..
15:25
So you're advice to Keir Starman, will be just stick it out
15:30
Try to speak through delivery. I mean, we knew, we know exactly what he's like. He was like that
15:35
when he stood for election. He was like that when he was Labour leader. He hasn't changed. He promised to speak through delivery. He actually does have some things he can speak about
15:43
So he should try to do that. I mean, it's almost as if he has got no faith in himself. And if he
15:48
starts from that point, nobody's going to have faith in him. I'm joined in the studio now by Mike Tapp, the Migration Minister and MP for Dover and Deal
15:56
Mike, great to have you on the show. These are very encouraging figures for the government, for sure
16:01
But I don't get a sense of kind of big celebrations going out from the government. It's almost as if you're embarrassed about it
16:06
Oh, no, we're not embarrassed at all, but cautious. This is a step towards where we want to be
16:13
You know, an 82 percent drop in net migration is really encouraging
16:18
We've achieved that by making, you know, skilled worker visas to degree level higher
16:24
English language have also taken around 100 occupations off the list that can use foreign workforces
16:29
There's also a lot of work to do on illegal migration, deporting more. I mean, that's up by 41% at 67,000 as well today
16:37
We've moved around 12,000 out of hotels in the last year. Decision making, those initial decisions are up significantly over 70%
16:45
So lots of progress, but there is progress on the legal migration side
16:49
does there come a point not too far ahead where you actually have to loosen the system again
16:54
In other words, where parts of the economy are kind of screaming for lack of labour
16:58
Well, there's still a significant number who are not in education, employment needs
17:03
Exactly. And a part of this is encouraging the British workforce and giving them opportunities to get into work
17:12
And that's what will partially result from this. So in short, you're going to carry on squeezing the work visas
17:18
Well, we've also got to bear in mind another point that the health and social care visa that we've frozen and that's helped us get to this figure was attracting low skilled workers when it comes to the economy
17:30
I'm not saying it's not the contribution isn't appreciated. It is important
17:35
But as a part of that influx under the last government, around 600,000 people entered the country to fill just 40,000 vacancies
17:46
So that's unmanageable. So the steps we're making is about restoring that order and control that we said we would
17:53
But, of course, there's more to do. Looking through the figures, there's still a huge number of people leaving the country
17:59
We don't quite know who they are, but about half of them are under 35
18:03
So they're, you know, young, active people. Are you concerned about that number
18:07
No, there seems to be some misinformation going out there today. I'm not saying that the stat's not right, but it's been spun by some opposition to say that
18:16
there's some sort of brain drain and they're all in. Well, that actually number has come down
18:20
Absolutely. It has come down in the last year and it's stayed pretty flat over the last four or five years
18:25
And a lot of them are younger. And it's quite normal that young people want to get out
18:29
and experience the world, work elsewhere, study elsewhere, and then come back
18:33
And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. So this spin is a little bit odd today, to be honest
18:37
Let's talk finally about one very specific, relatively small but important group, which is the very rich
18:43
We live in a much more mobile world where if you tax people, they can leave
18:48
And we see from the Sunday Times Rich List, for instance, how many people are leaving the country
18:53
Now, this is difficult for the Treasury because you have to tax somebody. But to what extent are you concerned about not the brain drain
18:59
but the super rich drain? Well, that's not happening. And this government has come up with a tax system that's fair
19:06
and actually has given us stability. If you look at the growth that we've achieved, six interest rate cuts
19:11
the fact that inflation is coming down, all with these global events, Iran, Ukraine, recovering from COVID
19:18
So that stability wouldn't have come without the economic system that Rachel Reeves has put in place
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