Migration to the UK rises despite Cameron's target to reduce it
Net long-term migration to the UK rose to 260,000 in the year ended in June, an increase of 182,000 since last year, the Office for National Statistics said on Thursday.
The increase was especially driven by a rise of European working migrants by up 45,000 to 247,000.
National Insurance Number registrations increased by 12% with Romanian and Polish citizens having the highest number of applications, according to the data.
Bulgarian citizens in the UK rose from 18,000 last year to 32,000 this year.
These are bad news to the Prime minister David Cameron, who was expecting to reduce the number of migrants to around 100,000 before next year's elections.
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, told LBC radio: “This was a Conservative preoccupation. They made that promise. They have now broken that promise and they will have to suffer the embarrassment of having done so.”
The data also revealed 323,000 people left the UK during the period, a number that has been "relatively stable" in the past four years.