Some are claiming that freedom of movement with the EU would mean hundreds of millions of Europeans wanting to come to Britain. They didn’t do that before 2016. The scale of the claim is absurd. And more importantly, free movement never meant anyone could simply move here indefinitely without meeting any conditions. After three months, people who weren’t working, studying or genuinely seeking work could lose their right to reside if they also lacked sufficient resources and health insurance. David Cameron’s government chose not to enforce those rules. Blaming free movement for that choice doesn’t make the scare stories true.

This is net migration: the number of people who move to the UK to live here long term, minus the number who leave. Before 2021, EU+ nationals made up a large part of the UK’s positive net migration. That changed after free movement ended on 31 December 2020 and the new points-based system took effect on 1 January 2021. EU+ net migration fell and became negative from 2022: more EU+ nationals were leaving the UK long term than arriving. Meanwhile, non-EU+ net migration rose sharply. In this year-ending-December series, it was about 100,000 in 2020, then 522,000 in 2021, 981,000 in 2022 and just over 1 million in 2023. That growth more than offset the fall in EU+ migration, so total net migration surged rather than falling after free movement ended. That is to say that we had Brexit, the UK gov set migration policy, and Boris Johnson's Brexit government chose to increase migration, not lower it. And the central point is that ending free movement simply changed where much of the UK’s net migration came from.