Representatives from the four main political parties took part in Sky News’ Immigration Debate on Wednesday evening.

Home Office minister Mike Tapp debated alongside shadow justice minister Dr Kieran Mullan, the Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokesperson Lisa Smart, and Reform UK’s head of policy Zia Yusuf.

Catch up on the programme in the Politics Hub

Throughout, the Sky News Data x Forensics team was checking the politicians’ claims against the numbers.

Here’s what we’ve found.

How many illegal migrants are there in the UK?

Reform’s Zia Yusuf used his opening statement to repeat a statistic which his party has referenced often in recent weeks – that there are “north of” one million people “in this country illegally”.

However, this is not something we have reliable data on, or that Mr Yusuf can claim to confidently know.

“Illegal”, or “unauthorised”, tends to refer to migrants without valid immigration status to be in the UK. For example those who enter the country without a visa, or who overstay a valid visa, or remain in the UK after an unsuccessful asylum claim.

They are not legally allowed to work, and they are not eligible for housing benefits or most free public services.

We do not know how many people fall into this category, and the government does not produce estimates – some people may disappear from the system.

The most recent independent estimates are for 2017. But the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory advises treating these with extreme caution as they have a high margin for error.

They were published by the Pew Research Centre, an American think tank, and put the figure at anywhere between 700,000 to 900,000 in 2017. This is revised down from a previous estimate of 1.2 million, which is likely too high.

Small boat crossings

Diane from Slough, in our audience, asked a question about the number of people crossing on small boats, to which Conservative Dr Kieran Mullan responded: “The number of people crossing has gone up. It’s at record levels compared to when Labour took office.”

Newly appointed Labour Home Office minister Mike Tapp later defended his party’s record, saying: “We inherited open borders. We inherited a system that had 150,000 people crossing in just three or four years.”

There are inaccuracies with both of those statements. Fewer than 130,000 people arrived on small boats in the six years before Labour came to power, with the majority of those since 2020 – not 150,000 as Mr Tapp claimed.

And Dr Mullan is not right to say the number of people arriving is at record levels.

More people have crossed the Channel on small boats so far this year than had by this point in any previous year, but the highest number of arrivals recorded during a 365-day period occurred between October 2021 and October 2022, spanning the premierships of three Tory prime ministers – Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.

Those numbers had started to fall, however, under Mr Sunak, before rising after Sir Keir Starmer became PM. Mr Tapp’s claim that his party “inherited open borders” didn’t address this fact.

The Home Office has previously claimed that an extended period of calm weather in the Channel has made it easier for migrants to cross.

But our analysis found that, while it’s true the weather has been unusually calm this year, that factor alone cannot explain the high number of crossings over the last 12 months.

Asylum hotels

Dr Mullan also claimed “the number of people in hotels is higher than it was when Labour took office”.

That’s true – there are currently 32,059 asylum seekers being housed in 210 hotels in the UK, compared with 29,585 people in 213 hotels when Labour were elected.

But the highest number on record was while the Conservatives were in power. In September 2023, there were 56,042 asylum seekers being housed in 400 hotels. That number had fallen substantially by the time they left office.

Read more: A council-by-council breakdown of asylum hotels

See how many asylum seekers are being housed in your area:

A record number of people claimed asylum in the UK in the year to June 2025, at over 111,000. Over the same period, 134,037 initial decisions were taken on asylum applications, with around 52,000 granted and 58,000 refused.

Those with a rejected claim can go on to appeal, and the recent increased number of applications as well as a higher rate of initial rejections has led to a backlog in the courts, now at over 50,000 people.

The government has said it wants to increase returns of failed asylum seekers and others without legal immigration status, but Reform’s Mr Yusuf accused them of overinflating the numbers, as most returns are voluntary.

The number of removals of people without legal immigration status was 35,833 people in the year to June 2025, an increase of 5,000 on the year preceding it, with returns now at their highest level since 2016/17, though lower than the 47,000 in 2012.

Legal migration

Asylum claims are a much smaller share of overall migration than legal work routes.

Mr Tapp said immigration was too high under the Conservatives, and Labour had managed to “cut that by 300,000”, and had “halved working visas”. He said Labour are increasing requirements for qualifications and salaries.

But much of this trend was already under way before Labour took office.

Read more: How much does the UK rely on legal migration?

Though the Tories oversaw a big increase in legal migration, they were also responsible for later rolling back and tightening the rules, for example on limiting care worker and student dependants in early 2024.

This led to the number of work dependant visas halving to 103,518 by 2025, and student dependant visas decreasing by 88% to 18,000.

Labour’s immigration white paper sets out a further tightening of the rules. The Home Office says this will result in 98,000 fewer visas being issued next year.

That is equivalent to 10% of all of those issued in 2024, but less than the drop since 2023 which Mr Tapp was talking about. That was largely a result of decreasing numbers of dependants.

The ONS projects net migration to fall further, to an average long-term level of 340,000 a year by mid-2028, based on the trend from before the Conservatives left office.

Do migrants contribute more than they take?

During the debate, audience member Tavinder from Bromsgrove asked: “Does legal immigration benefit the UK? And their contribution: are they taking more or contributing more?”

From a purely economic perspective, the answer is much more complex than a simple “yes” or “no.”

According to 2024 analysis from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the UK’s independent assessor of public finances, whether a migrant is a net contributor or net “taker” from the economy depends on several factors, including their age and average earnings.

The OBR found the average high-wage migrant worker arriving at the age of 25 is a net contributor to the economy across their entire lifetime. A high wage here is measured as one about 30% higher than the average salary.

The average annual salary in the UK is currently £37,430, meaning a “high wage” is anything above £48,659.

A typical British-born individual has a negative fiscal impact on the economy as a child. Over the course of their working years, this “debt” is gradually reduced until they become net positive contributors.  

In contrast, migrant workers earning above-average wages and immigrating during their prime working years skip this period of negative fiscal impact on the UK as children. This means they start paying into the economy as soon as they arrive. 

On the other hand, the OBR estimated the typical low-wage migrant workers has a net negative fiscal contribution to the UK that only grows as they age. 

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

Bill Belichick was presented the game ball Saturday following North Carolina’s 20-3 triumph over Charlotte. It marked his first victory as a collegiate coach after winning 333 games (playoffs included) in the NFL.

As good as the Tar Heels’ bounce-back performance must have felt, it’s certainly possible he enjoyed a different result from the weekend even more: Las Vegas 20, New England 13.

Belichick is an all-time great at two things: winning football games and carrying grudges to the pettiest of levels. One tends to fuel the other. Belichick is often at his best when he has some villain, real or imagined, to prove wrong.

It is why UNC fans should be encouraged that Belichick is still so dripping with anger against his old NFL franchise that he would resort to juvenile antics such as banning Patriots scouts from the Heels’ football building.

“It’s obvious I’m not welcome at their facility,” Belichick said Saturday. “So, they’re not welcome at ours.”

This, to be clear, is comically ridiculous. The easy joke, based on UNC’s 48-10 humiliation against TCU in the season opener, is that if Belichick really wanted to doom the Pats, he would get them to draft a bunch of his guys.

Really, though, it’s just another sign that Belichick has not forgiven New England owner Robert Kraft for their split following a 4-13 campaign in 2023. It’s possible that he blames some of the NFL’s lack of interest in hiring him to Kraft talking him down to fellow owners.

In fact, it is not obvious that Belichick is banned from the Patriots facility.

Current New England coach Mike Vrabel, a former player under Belichick, said Monday that Belichick is always welcome and pointed to Belichick’s presence at a June 2024 ceremony honoring Tom Brady.

“Since his departure as the head coach here, he’s been back,” Vrabel said. “I’ll leave it at that.”

UNC hired Belichick to breathe life into its often decent, but rarely great, program. In doing so, it is getting the full BB experience: the good, the bad, the soap opera. Maybe even a winning team.

There’ll be no dull moments. Carolina should understand this, though, about its new coach. Belichick tends to feed off feuds.

Belichick’s motivation to build the Patriots came, in part, to show he was more than Bill Parcells’ defensive coordinator. Battles with the league office over Spygate and Deflategate sharpened him to help win six Super Bowls.

He has always been about small gestures of defiance, cutting the sleeves off his sweatshirt after the NFL mandated coaches wear Reebok clothing on the sideline, for example. He’s counterculture, even as he became the culture — or unexpected fashion influencer.

His fight with Kraft is just the latest.

Beyond no longer being the Patriots coach, Belichick was often portrayed poorly in a 2024 Apple TV 10-part docuseries “The Dynasty,” the distribution rights of which are owned by Kraft, according to reporting by ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. The team has denied any editorial influence over the project.

The response has been classic Belichick.

His autobiography “The Art of Winning” released last summer contained not a single mention of Kraft, his boss of 24 years. He and partner Jordon Hudson have also engaged in a trademark war with the Patriots over certain phrases (“Do Your Job,” for example) that the team currently owns. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, per reporting by ESPN’s Mike Rothstein, has refused Belichick’s requests.

Then there were Belichick’s comments to the Boston Globe about the positives of being a college coach.

“There’s no owner, there’s no owner’s son, there’s no cap, everything that goes with the marketing and everything else, which I’m all for that,” Belichick said. “But it’s way less of what it was at that level. …

“I’d say when we had our best years in New England, we had fewer people and more of a direct vision. And as that expanded, it became harder to be successful.”

The palace intrigue over the NFL’s greatest dynasty will rage for years, particularly involving the triumvirate of Belichick, Brady and Kraft, the owner who has never been shy about trying to grab some spotlight. It’s always interesting. Blame can shift because of perspective. Credit as well.

Just last week, Kraft, at least publicly, tried to offer an olive branch when he told WBZ-TV that he wanted a Belichick statue outside Gillette Stadium, alongside Brady’s.

“When Bill’s coaching career ends, we look forward to sitting down with him and having a statue made to be right next to Tommy,” Kraft said.

Apparently, Belichick was unmoved.

None of this has any obvious impact on winning the ACC, which is the goal of Belichick’s current job. That said, it doesn’t necessarily hurt the cause.

One of the risks in hiring a 73-year-old as a first-time college coach is that he would view the job as something to occupy his time, work with his kids and have some fun. That has mostly been the case for former NFL coaches landing in the NCAA, and it rarely works.

Belichick’s bitterness toward the Patriots to the extent that their scouts are barred from Chapel Hill is at least a sign of something different. Belichick knows the shots back at Foxborough don’t carry much weight if UNC is losing. Living well, after all, is the best revenge.

Belichick might be relentlessly focused on actually reaching the College Football Playoff … if only to show up Kraft.

Who cares about the motivation? The results are what matter.

And just imagine if, along the way, he learns to hate Duke or Dabo as much.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Four people have been arrested in connection to the shooting of Florida State linebacker Ethan Pritchard, Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Mark Glass said Wednesday.

Glass said Pritchard was “not doing anything wrong” when he was ambushed outside an apartment last month. He added that Pritchard was dropping off family members, an aunt and a child, when he was shot in the back of the head.

Pritchard, a 6-foot-2, 224-pound freshman from Sanford, Florida, remains in critical but stable condition at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. He was shot Aug. 31 while inside a vehicle outside apartments in Havana, according to the Gadsden County Sheriff’s Office.

Gadsden County Sheriff Morris Young said authorities believe Pritchard’s shooting was a case of mistaken identity.

Jayden Bodison, Caron Miller, Germany Atkins and an unnamed minor have been arrested in connection with the shooting, the FDLE said. Bodison, Miller and the juvenile were charged with three counts of attempted murder and one count of shooting into an occupied vehicle. Atkins was charged with one count of probation violation. It was not immediately clear if any of the accused had attorneys.

Pritchard did not play in Florida State’s season opener, a 31-17 victory over No. 8 Alabama in Tallahassee on Aug. 30.

“I recruited him for years, got a chance to watch him grow,” FSU coach Mike Norvell said Saturday. “The way that he plays the game, it’s a passion, energy. He loves it, absolutely loves it.

“To know that right now that’s taken away from him in a senseless act … you don’t always know why you have to go through things in life. You don’t understand the reasoning. But I do believe that God has his hand over Ethan and this football team and just all the relationships.”

Pritchard’s father, Earl, attended Florida State’s win over East Texas A&M on Saturday. He was on the sideline and in the locker room afterward.

“He’s a wonderful man,” Norvell said. “And being with him, I know it’s so very hard for anybody to have to go through. … But he told me earlier this week, ‘I know where my boy wants to be, so I’m going to go stand in his place for him.'”