Nigel Farage asks for UK's true population and slams visa counting 'failings'

Nigel Farage has slammed the Home Office for its "failings" to identify people who overstay their visas following a report on the previous government. The Reform UK leader suggested that the government agency does not have an accurate figure for how many people are living in Britain after the Tories were accused of not knowing how many people were working in the country illegally.

He wrote on Facebook: "Failings at the Home Office get even worse. Now we learn they don't even count people who overstay their visas. I wonder what the true population of the country really is?" While the Home Office doesn't primarily collect population figures, they work with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to utilise population data for their statistical work, particularly in areas like crime and policing. The ONS is the main body responsible for collecting and publishing population statistics for the UK.

However, MPs recently warned that the agency does not know how many people are leaving the UK after their visas expire or how many are working illegally, based on findings from the Conservative government.

The public accounts committee (PAC) accused the previous government of not collecting "basic information" such as the proportion of people on working visas who had returned to their home country.

The report did not reflect Labour's Immigration White Paper, which says it seeks to address many of the concerns it raised.

Exit checks had also not been analysed since the skilled worker visa route was introduced in 2020, which attracted 1.18 million applicants, the committee added.

The Home Office could only determine whether a person was still in the country by checking its data with airline passenger information, the report said.

It also claimed there was "widespread evidence of workers suffering debt bondage, working excessive hours and exploitative conditions", but "no reliable data on the extent of abuses".

Migrant workers, particularly in the social care sector, were found to be "vulnerable to exploitation" as their right to remain in Britain is dependent on their employer under the sponsorship model.

Over 470 sponsor licenses have been revoked in the care sector alone between July 2022 and December 2024 to help root out abuse and exploitation, the Home Office said. More than 39,000 workers were sponsored in this way since October 2020.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "We welcome this serious and detailed analysis of the previous government's decision five years ago to relax visa controls on skilled workers, which helped to drive an unprecedented increase in the UK's level of net migration and culminated in the record total of almost a million people set in the year ending June 2023.

"In the first six months of this new Government, the Home Office revoked and suspended the highest total of skilled worker sponsor licenses since records began in 2012.

"In May, more wide-ranging and decisive action was announced through our Immigration White Paper to tighten up the system further, to tackle abuse and exploitation in the care sector, and to deliver significantly lower levels of net migration over the course of this Parliament.

"This week alone, we raised the Skilled Worker threshold back to degree-level and ended overseas recruitment to the care sector, and we are determined to go further over the coming months to restore order and control to our immigration system and deliver the Plan for Change that we have promised the British people."