The population of England and Wales hit an estimated 61.8 million by mid-2024, with the increase driven almost entirely by net migration, according to official statistics.

The rise of 706,900 people year-on-year, or 1.2 percent, was the second-largest in records going back to 1949, the Office for National Statistics said.

Net migration totaled over 690,000 as 1.14 million people arrived from outside the UK, eclipsing the 452,200 who left for a country outside the UK. Meanwhile, 596,012 people were born and 566,030 died.

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At the start of this year, the ONS said the UK’s population would hit 72.5 million by mid-2032, an upward revision of more than 100,000. That meant an increase of 7.3 percent driven entirely by net migration, as births and deaths roughly equalize.

It assumed the number of people coming to the UK, minus those leaving, would settle at 340,000 per year onwards from 2027-28, up from previous estimates of 315,000.

But since then, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been cracking down on immigration. He has proposed restricting a number of routes for legal migrants, including entirely ending the recruitment of social care workers from overseas.

Hundreds of thousands of people had entered the country through that route since it was launched in 2020, but it had been heavily abused by unscrupulous employers charging would-be recruits.

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Earlier restrictions placed on migration by the previous Conservative government prompted net migration to the UK to almost halve in 2024 to 431,000.

The fall was driven by fewer people coming to work and study in the UK. However the number of irregular migrants arriving across the English Channel on dangerous small boats has hit a record in the first six months of this year, causing criticism of Starmer and his plan to “smash the gangs” of people smugglers.