Ministers have perfected a patter when talking about immigration. “We’re sorry – we’ve made mistakes, but we’re now getting it under control with our new, tough, Australian-style Points Based System”, they say. Last week, in his first speech on immigration in two years, Gordon Brown trumpeted the merits of the Points Based System (PBS) for immigration and citizenship. He claimed that “together they constitute a fundamental reform of a decade’s old system – a reform founded on the British values of personal responsibility and civic duty.”
Analysis of ONS National Population Projections
On 28 April 2026, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published its 2024-based National Population Projections, a 100-year modelling projection covering the UK and its

