Another Tory defector.

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Last week, Reform UK’s newest MP, Suella Braverman, and the party’s chairman, Zia Yusuf, argued that high levels of migration are placing unsustainable pressure on GP services, leaving British patients struggling to get appointments. This follows new data released by the Centre for Migration Control, suggesting that 752,000 migrants joined the GP register last year.

While the party continues to blame immigration for GP access pressures, it overlooks a central fact about the NHS workforce: More than 40 percent of doctors currently licensed to practise in the UK qualified overseas, and international graduates now make up the majority of new entrants to the medical register. The system Reform claims is being overwhelmed by migrants is, in reality, heavily sustained by them. Yet rhetoric tying GP shortages solely to migrant patients is becoming more frequent.

Immigration was discussed on QT last night. They were saying that net migration peaked at around 1 million but is now trending downwards and is currently around 200k based on most recent figures. They also said if the downward trend continues, we could indeed find ourselves at zero net migration and perhaps even going into a minus figure so to speak.

This raised an interesting point that I've previously mentioned on here. If net migration does indeed continue to drop, who will do the lower skilled jobs that many of these people do/did? Or indeed valued jobs such as care home workers etc.

It's all well and good saying 'well all we need to do is train our own people and/or force folk on benefits to do them' however I'll watch with interest to see how this is actually implemented.

I'm in the camp of we need immigration, but properly controlled etc. Folk that dream of zero immigrants coming in aren't really thinking it through.

All of this excludes illegal migration.

UK net migration has dropped sharply to an estimated 204,000 in the year ending June 2025, a reduction of roughly 78% from the peak of 944,000 in March 2023. This decline, largely driven by lower non-EU, work, and student visa immigration, brings levels back to pre-2020 averages, with further declines possible as tighter visa restrictions take effect.

Net migration falls 78% in two years returning to pre-Brexit levels: every major immigration category except asylum declines - Migration Observatory

migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk

 

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The issue has become conflated by 'reform' between illegal migrants and legal migrants, twisting them together with misused rhetoric to suit their political game.

It's amusing to think Joe Bloggs is moaning about all the migrants coming in, and will still be moaning 20 years from now when he's in a care home and it's short staffed, impacting the level of care he receives.