Billionaire businessman Sir Jim Ratcliffe has apologised for describing the UK as “colonised by immigrants”, after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer condemned the language as “wrong and offensive” and senior ministers said the Ineos founder had “got his facts wrong” on migration and population figures.

The dispute, triggered by Ratcliffe’s remarks in a Sky News interview on 11 February, has widened into a broader argument about the scale of immigration and what migrants contribute to the public finances — including renewed attention on how official forecasters model migrants’ tax payments and why simple headline numbers circulating in the debate can be misleading.

Ratcliffe, who is also a part-owner of Manchester United, made the comments in an interview with Sky News economics editor Ed Conway. In the same exchange he cited figures about benefit claimants and suggested the UK population had jumped by 12 million since 2020, a claim that does not align with official estimates.

Starmer responded on 12 February by calling the wording “offensive and wrong” and saying Ratcliffe should apologise, as Downing Street warned the comments risked “play[ing] into the hands of those who want to divide our country”.

Ratcliffe later issued a statement saying: “I am sorry that my choice of language has offended some people in the UK and Europe and caused concern,” while arguing there should be an “open debate” about migration, skills and investment and repeating calls for “controlled and well-managed immigration”.

Justice minister Jake Richards said Ratcliffe’s figures were “completely wrong”, while Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham described the comments as “inaccurate, insulting and inflammatory”, according to ITV News. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey also criticised Ratcliffe’s language, while Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said Britain had seen “unprecedented mass immigration”, reflecting the polarised political reaction.

Sky News and other outlets have pointed to Office for National Statistics estimates indicating the UK population was about 67 million in mid-2020 and around 70 million in mid-2024, undermining Ratcliffe’s suggestion that it rose from 58 million to 70 million over the period. Fact-checking coverage has suggested the “58 million” figure more closely matches the UK population around 2000, meaning the 12 million increase would span roughly a quarter-century rather than four to five years.

Alongside the dispute over rhetoric and population statistics, the row has also refocused attention on a separate and persistent question in the immigration debate: how much tax do migrants actually pay?

The Office for Budget Responsibility, which produces the government’s official economic and fiscal forecasts, does not publish a single HMRC-style table setting out “total tax paid by migrants” in a given year. Instead, it models the fiscal effects of changes in migration under different scenarios, using assumptions about employment, earnings and eligibility for public services.

In its March 2024 Economic and Fiscal Outlook, the OBR set out a key modelling assumption that newly arriving migrants pay “wider taxation” at a level close to the average UK adult, which it put at about £19,500 per person per year across the forecast period. In the same analysis it forecast that immigration-related fees and charges — including visa fees, the Immigration Health Surcharge and the immigration skills charge — would raise around £4.1 billion a year.

Because the OBR’s work is designed to test what happens if migration is higher or lower than forecast, those figures are often cited out of context in political debate. Economists note that the OBR’s “wider taxation” concept is not limited to income tax alone, and that the office’s approach is a planning assumption rather than a definitive annual accounting exercise.

However, the OBR’s per-person benchmark can be used to sense-check claims about the overall scale of migrants’ tax contribution, by combining it with population data on how many foreign-born people live in the UK.

Census-based demographic estimates put the foreign-born population at around 10.7 million in the UK, while some more recent reporting has cited a figure of about 11.4 million, roughly 19% of the population. Using a common “working-age” bracket of 20 to 60, around 72% of the foreign-born population falls into that range, implying roughly 7.7 million working-age foreign-born residents.

Applying the OBR’s £19,500 “wider taxation” assumption to that working-age group yields an indicative figure of about £150 billion a year (7.7 million multiplied by £19,500). Analysts caution that this is not a precise administrative total and should not be presented as one; nevertheless, it suggests the tax contribution associated with a large working-age foreign-born population is likely to be far larger than “tens of billions” figures that periodically circulate in public debate.

A more expansive illustration — applying the same per-person figure to the entire foreign-born population — would produce a total above £200 billion a year, but economists say that approach is easier to dispute because it includes children, pensioners and others who may not pay taxes at average adult levels. The working-age calculation is therefore seen as a more conservative cross-check, though still dependent on modelling assumptions.

Experts also stress that migrants are not a single fiscal category. Tax paid per person varies sharply by age, earnings, hours worked, visa route, length of stay and sector, and “foreign-born” includes people who have lived in the UK for decades and those who have become British citizens. The OBR’s modelling focuses on the fiscal consequences of additional migration over the forecast period, rather than allocating historic tax receipts between UK-born and foreign-born residents.

Even with those caveats, economists say the order-of-magnitude implication of the OBR’s own assumptions is difficult to reconcile with low headline estimates of migrants’ tax contribution. In the OBR’s March 2024 scenario work, higher migration is generally associated with higher tax receipts and lower borrowing in the medium term, partly because the office assumes many new arrivals are of prime working age and that “very few” are eligible for welfare in the forecast horizon.

Ratcliffe’s remarks have also revived scrutiny of his personal circumstances after his move to Monaco, a jurisdiction known for its favourable personal tax regime. Reporting has described Ratcliffe as resident in Monaco, and critics have argued that a Monaco-based billionaire criticising immigration is politically and symbolically charged. Tax specialists note, however, that definitive claims about any individual’s tax bill are difficult to verify without records, and that non-residents can still owe UK tax on certain UK-source income depending on their circumstances.

The controversy has spilled into sport. The Guardian reported that the Football Association is reviewing whether Ratcliffe’s comments could be seen as bringing the game into disrepute, while Manchester United has issued a statement affirming its commitment to diversity. The Guardian also reported that prominent figures in football and rugby, including Pep Guardiola and Maro Itoje, have publicly rejected Ratcliffe’s framing.

The row comes amid heightened sensitivity around migration after record net migration estimates in the post-pandemic period. Some fact-checking coverage has cited net migration peaking at 906,000 in 2023, before falling back as ministers tightened rules on work and study routes. Further official figures are expected later this year, and the OBR is due to update its forecasts in subsequent fiscal events.

For now, the immediate political pressure remains on the language and accuracy of high-profile claims. But the argument has also reinforced a broader point made by economists and statisticians: that public debate about immigration is often driven by numbers that do not survive basic checking — and that the fiscal footprint of millions of working-age foreign-born residents, on the OBR’s own assumptions, is unlikely to be a small footnote in the national accounts.

An earlier version of this story referred to migrants contributing around £17 billion in 2025. That figure was incorrect. The OBR does not publish a single annual “total migrant tax paid” number; however, applying the OBR’s per-person “wider taxation” assumption to census-based working-age foreign-born population estimates implies an annual figure well above £140 billion.

Whatever your politics, that scale matters. If you want an honest immigration debate, you start with the fact that migrants aren’t a rounding error in the public finances — they are a major contributor.