Reform chief Richard Tice in scorching water over migration numbers declare

Reform UK’s party leader Richard Tice has been scrutinised for a claim he made on migration numbers.

In a social media post last week, Mr Tice said that Rishi Sunak had ‘welcomed more migrants in just two years… than arrived between 1066 and 2010’.

But his claim has since been ‘fact checked’ – and X/Twitter placed a ‘community note’ under the claims, allowing contributors to add context.

In 2022 and 2023, just under 2.5 million immigrants in total came to the UK, while between 1964 – when Office for National Statistics (ONS) data begins – and 2010 more than 14.6 million people emigrated to the UK.

Provisional data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released on May 23 showed that long-term immigration to the UK was 1.218 million for the year ending December 2023 after being 1.257 million for the same period in 2022. Together these add up to 2.475 million people.

In a social media post last week, Richard Tice said that Rishi Sunak had ‘welcomed more migrants in just two years… than arrived between 1066 and 2010’

In 2022 and 2023, just under 2.5 million immigrants in total came to the UK, while between 1964 – when Office for National Statistics ( ONS ) data begins – and 2010 more than 14.6 million people emigrated to the UK (file image) 

ONS immigration data from 1964 to 2010 shows there were 14.646 million immigrants across the 46 years.

That alone is a figure almost six times higher than total immigration over the past two years, even though it is missing data from nearly 900 years of Mr Tice’s selected range of 1066 and 2010.

If measuring net migration – that is the number of people who moved to the UK minus the number who left the country – the figures are slightly different.

Net migration was 685,000 in 2023 and 764,000 in 2022, for a combined tally of 1.449 million.

Meanwhile, ONS figures suggest that net migration between 1964 and 2010 was 2.287 million.

Since ONS records do not go back as far as 1066, it is unclear what total net migration would be if data from the other 898 years could be included.

Reform UK’s press office did not respond when asked to provide a source for the claim in Mr Tice’s post on X, formerly Twitter.