Despite the claims, small boat crossings haven’t fallen – but look elsewhere for real immigration story

Let’s start with one claim that’s been causing a bit of confusion today.

Contrary to what the Home Office press release today suggests, small boat crossings to the UK have not fallen since last year – at least not in any sense that any normal person would understand it.

Actually, the cumulative number of people coming across the Channel to the UK this year is running at a higher rate than this time last year – about 18% higher as of the end of June and about 11% higher as of last week.

So how, you might be wondering, can the Home Office possibly claim that small boats are down 29% on last year? The short answer is that what they’re talking about is more distant history.

Their figures are looking not at the cumulative number of people coming in so far this year, but at the total number that came in in the 12 months to the end of June. And it so happens that there was a lull in crossings last autumn and winter, partly down to bad weather.

But here’s what matters more than any of this. The sheer number of small boats migrants is a tiny, tiny sliver of the migration total in this country. Just over 30,000 people came over this way in the 12 months to June.

Clearly, that’s not nothing – and it’s a total which is far higher than some years ago. But it’s piddling in comparison with the overall migration total of around 1.3 million.

It’s tiny in comparison with the 547,000 people coming over to work, or the 530,000 coming over in that period to study.

These are the real story when it comes to migration: hundreds of thousands of students and workers, mostly from outside the EU, coming to the UK in almost unprecedented numbers.

But the big news is that those numbers are now starting to come down. The number both of skilled workers (especially health workers) and masters students has fallen sharply.

They’re still well above their pre-Brexit levels but the direction of travel has at least changed.

The question now is what that means for the labour force.

Can domestic workers fill the gap left by immigrant health workers? Will universities – already strapped for funding – be able to survive the diminution of a lucrative revenue stream (those foreign students)?

These are the questions facing the Labour government as it attempts to confront an unprecedentedly volatile immigration picture.