Labour’s own voters now see high immigration as the biggest single pressure on the National Health Service, a survey has found.
The poll of 2,000 people who last year voted Sir Keir Starmer into Downing Street came as another 437 migrants in small boats crossed the Channel to Britain on Friday, followed by 583 on Saturday.
It illustrates the threat to the party posed by Reform UK’s immigration policies, which includes freezing all non-essential immigration and stopping the illegal small-boat Channel crossings.
The survey asked the Labour voters which out of five issues creates ‘the biggest burden’ for the NHS, and some 24 per cent said high immigration.
And when asked about their voting intentions, 22 per cent said they would consider voting Reform at the next General Election, while 40 per cent declared approval for the party’s leader, Nigel Farage.
The latest Home Office figures on dinghy crossings of the English Channel for the year to date is 18,400 – a rise of almost 50 per cent on this time last year.
By this date in 2024, 12,644 had arrived in small boats, in 2023 there had been 10,691 arrivals and in 2022 it was 11,739.
Downing Street admitted last week that the dinghy situation was ‘deteriorating’.
A spokesman for the Adam Smith Institute, which commissioned the survey, said: ‘It is clear that the British people have felt the impact of mass immigration on healthcare.’
The poll found that the other burdens for the NHS included 22 per cent who chose the ‘mental health crisis’ while 13 per cent blamed the lack of social care provision, such as care home space for the elderly.
