U.K. Immigration Could Decline as New Rules Bite, Labour Budget Doesn’t Help

From March 11, social care workers from overseas were no longer allowed to bring dependants on their visa.

Immigration in the United Kingdom could decline this year as a clutch of new rules to curb migrant inflows are beginning to have an impact and the October budget that makes it more expensive to hire workers will be a further drag.

Overall visa applications from skilled workers, students and their dependants have fallen 36 percent in the first nine months of this year versus the same period a year earlier, Home Office data shows. Applications from health, care workers and their dependents have shown the biggest decline, dropping 64 percent.

The previous Conservative Party government enacted series of measures to curb the inflow of foreigners after immigration surged. It disallowed foreign care workers from bringing dependants on their visas from March 11, 2024 since health and care workers have been one of the main drivers of the surge in migration since the pandemic. Students were also disallowed from bringing dependants into the country from 1 January this year, apart from those in postgraduate research courses or courses with government-funded scholarships.

Home Office data shows there were a total of 582,200 visa applications from skilled workers, students and their dependents in January-September, down from 913,700 applications in the same period of 2023.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves budget last week could further slow the inflow of migrant workers as it makes hiring more expensive. She raised employers’ national insurance contributions by 1.2 percentage points to 15 percent from April 2025, although employees will not pay more directly. The government will also reduce a secondary threshold when contributions are due from £9,100 to £5,000. Together, these measures will raise £25 billion a year by the end of the forecast period, the biggest single tax raising measure in the budget. This is a tax on jobs and will likely impact recruitment in the years to come, including of foreign workers.

Net migration, the number of people coming to the U.K. to live for the long-term minus those emigrating, climbed to a record 764,000 in 2022, about three times the annual average before the pandemic. Net migration fell 10 percent in 2023 to 685,000, the Office of National Statistics has said, but was still well above pre-pandemic levels.

Other measures introduced by the Conservative government to curb immigration included raising the minimum general salary to be able to apply for a Skilled Worker visa to £38,700 a year from £26,200 from 4 April 2024, while the ‘going rate’ minimum salary specific to each job was also increased.

The new Labour government, which swept the July 4 general elections, retained all those measures. But Home Secretary Yvette Cooper ordered a review of a key immigration provision that reflects a shift in strategy by tying foreign worker visas to local skills development.

Cooper asked the Migration Advisory Committee to evaluate the continuing reliance of key sectors, particularly information technology and engineering, to international recruitment. The review is part of the Labour government’s new strategy to not use immigration as an alternative to training or tackling workforce problems in the U.K.