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UK migration: Brexit and Covid produce big drop in numbers | UK migration: Brexit and Covid produce big drop in numbers |
(32 minutes later) | |
Net migration - the difference between people entering and leaving the UK - fell by 88% last year due to Covid restrictions, official figures suggest. | |
Brexit was also a factor, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), but it stressed there was "no evidence of an exodus" from the UK. | |
The estimates show net migration in 2020 was 34,000, compared with 271,000 the previous year. | |
This was the lowest level of net migration for many years, the ONS said. | |
But it was "difficult to disentangle" the impact of the end of free movement from the EU from the effects of the pandemic, the statisticians said. | |
In March 2020, the public were told to stop all non-essential travel in a bid to prevent the spread of coronavirus, and air travel to and from the UK dropped by 95% in the early months of the pandemic. | |
The quarterly report found estimated that 268,000 people came to the UK during 2020, compared with 592,000 people in 2019. | |
At the same time, an estimated 234,000 left the country to live abroad - a fall on the 2019 number of 300,000. | |
Net migration in 2020 from the EU was negative, with 94,000 more EU nationals thought to have left the UK than to have arrived. | |
The ONS warned that its figures were based on "experimental research" and "subject to a high level of uncertainty". | |
The organisation was forced to suspend the International Passenger Survey, the traditional method of measuring migration through surveys at ports and airports. due to the pandemic. |