The truth is our immigration system doesn’t really know who is here – and how much it costs Britain

Shameful tally

MIGRATION to Britain has been running out of control for two decades now.

But — even to a public that has grown wearily accustomed to record numbers of arrivals — the revelations of yesterday were jaw-dropping.

In 2023, the Official for National Statistics said, net migration was an astounding 906,000.

It is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Liverpool to our population in just a single year.

Shockingly, the ONS admitted it had also uncovered 166,000 more people in Britain than previously thought.

In part this was because of a naive assumption that visitors here on expired visas were going back home rather than in fact secretly staying here undetected. Who’d have thought it?

This is the same hapless ONS, incidentally, whose guesswork we rely upon to help plan our public services.

Little wonder we have a system struggling to cope.

If there was a glimmer of positive news, it’s that a belated migration crackdown by the Tories is starting to bite.

This year, net migration is down by 20 per cent — to a still unmanageable 728,000 (assuming the ONS has now learned to count).

The truth is our system doesn’t really know who is here, where they are living and how much it costs the country.

Faced with this massive influx, in 2023 we built just 150,000 new homes.

The Tories committed political suicide by allowing all of this to happen while pretending to tackle it.

New leader Kemi Badenoch plainly gets that and insists she will come up with radical solutions to win back trust.

Her plan includes a fixed cap on the number of visas and curbs on the benefits paid to migrants.

For his part, Sir Keir Starmer cobbled together a press conference yesterday to denounce the Tories.

When it came to solutions, however, we got precious little­ and certainly no hard numerical limit on arrivals.

Instead, there’ll be more consultations and promises that something will eventually be done.

In the meantime, it’s the British people — faced with overcrowded public services and a housing crisis — who will suffer.

Road to ruin

DESPITE repeated promises of action, drivers are still being fleeced at the pumps.

Profiteering at the forecourts means firms are raking in more cash even as prices have fallen since the summer.

You could always go green and switch to an electric car.

Except that — even if you could find somewhere to plug it in — rip-off fast-charging is now ten times more expensive than doing it at home.

And you’d only ruin it by driving over one of Britain’s millions of potholes anyway.