Burnham — “Trend Significantly Down”; Migration “Needs to Fall Further”
At today’s Makerfield campaign launch, Andy Burnham said that UK net migration “needs to fall further”, after Office for National Statistics data on Thursday showed net migration had almost halved to 171,000 in 2025. People on the doorstep, Burnham said, have “raised their concerns about immigration” with him. The Greater Manchester mayor said the latest figures show the “trend is significantly down” but added the government must “get the balance right” on its plans to make it harder for migrants to settle permanently in the UK. The Home Office has forecast around 1.6 million people could settle in the UK between 2026 and 2030 if no further changes are made.
Burnham’s explicit endorsement of Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s skills-based migration crackdown is the most substantive policy positioning of his by-election campaign so far. The Guardian reported on Wednesday that Burnham’s allies confirmed he would not seek to dilute the government’s migration curbs — including the extension of indefinite leave to remain from five to ten years that Angela Rayner had described as “un-British”. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has called Burnham “open-borders Andy”; the Friday positioning is designed to close that line of attack. Mahmood has separately announced further measures including a requirement that migrants speak English to A-level standard and an increase in the skilled worker visa salary threshold to £41,700.