A claim that more migrants settled in the U.K. in the last two years than between 1066 and 2010 is false

What is the claim?

In May, a Facebook user claimed more migrants settled in the U.K. in the last two years than the total number of migrants who arrived in the country between 1066 and 2010. They wrote, "More migrants settled in the UK in just the last two years than came here in the period from the Norman Invasion until David Cameron became PM in 2010. If you aren't incensed by this flagrant attack on our national and cultural identity, you aren't paying attention."

Screenshot of the Facebook post making the false claims (Source: Screenshot/Facebook/Modified by Logically Facts)

An archived version of this and another post with a similar claim can be seen here and here.  

David Cameron served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016 and as leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. According to National Geographic, "One of the most influential monarchies in the history of England began in 1066 C.E. with the Norman Conquest led by William, the Duke of Normandy."
 
The claim that more migrants came to the U.K. in the last two years than the total number of migrants who arrived in the country between 1066 and 2010 does not hold true. Available data suggests that total long-term immigration between the years 1964 and 2010 is much more than the total long-term immigration in the years 2022 and 2023. 

How did we find the truth?

We contacted the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the executive office of the U.K. Statistics Authority, for data related to immigration. Glenn Garrett from the ONS directed us to the latest available data on long-term international immigration, emigration, and net migration (the number of people immigrating minus the people emigrating) for the U.K. since 2012.  

The ONS has used the "new admin-based methods" to calculate this data since 2012. According to the ONS, these new "estimates are produced using a method that relies less on International Passenger Survey (IPS) data and makes greater use of administrative data."

Meanwhile, historical estimates (pre-2012), done using the old IPS methodology, go back to 1964. 

What does the data show?

Since we do not have data going back to 1066, we decided to use the old IPS methodology-based available ONS data to calculate the total immigration to the U.K. from 1964 up to 2010, the year Cameron became the PM. 

This data suggests that net immigration between 1964 and 2010 was around 14.646 million.

According to the new method-based ONS data, total long-term immigration to the U.K. in the years 2022 and 2023 amounted to around 2.475 million people.

Given that we still have not counted immigration between 1066 and 1964 and that the total long-term immigration numbers (14.646 million) for 1964-2010 already exceed the total long-term immigration numbers (2.475 million) for 2022 and 2023, it seems clear that the claim is incorrect.

Further, we also accessed historical immigration numbers dating back to 1855, published by the Bank of England. This data shows that between 1855 and 2010, excluding the wartime period from 1939 to 1946, the estimated total immigration to the U.K. was around 32.52 million, which further corroborates our findings. 

However, it is true that the methods used to measure immigration have changed several times, making it difficult to compare figures from different periods directly. Garrett added, "These IPS data are not comparable to our new methods due to new methodology and data sources, and the tables aren't always the most up-to-date."

Net migration

Net migration has also risen sharply in the U.K. since 2021. Since 1994, the U.K. has consistently seen more people migrating than leaving, whereas net migration was mostly negative before that. 

The estimated net migration to the U.K. hit a record high of 764,000 in 2022 before reducing slightly in 2023 to 685,000, amounting to 1.449 million in the two-year period. ONS data using the IPS methodology suggest that net migration between 1964 and 2010 was around 2.287 million. 

This shows that while net migration numbers for the U.K. have been significantly higher in the last two years, they, too, do not surpass the net migration numbers between 1964 and 2010. 

The verdict

While it is true that net migration has witnessed a recent sharp increase in the U.K., there is no evidence that the number of migrants arriving in the country in the last two years is more than between the years 1066 and 2010. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.

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