Skilled migration to the UK will rise under radical reforms to immigration that Boris Johnson signed off last week.

The prime minister and Priti Patel, the home secretary, met on Tuesday to finalise the details of Britain’s Australian-style points-based system, which will abolish the route into the UK for unskilled migrants from January 1 next year.

Home Office figures suggest the new rules will mean an overnight reduction in unskilled EU migrants of about 90,000 a year, who will no longer have a route into Britain. Net migration to the UK was 212,000 in the year to June 2019.

But officials predict a rise in the number of skilled migrants coming to the UK from 2021, currently 65,000 a year. At the moment they are