Migrants to the UK are more likely to work in the NHS and pay more in taxes and visa fees than the cost of services they use. Migrants are on average younger and healthier than the UK-born population and initially use fewer health services, though usage converges over time.
By 16 votes to 10, the chamber rejected the proposition that immigration nets the NHS a benefit, a 24-point margin that reads as a solid rather than crushing verdict against the government's favoured line on migrant contribution to public services.
The interesting fracture sits inside the age data, not across it. The 25-34 cohort, the platform's largest single bloc here at 11 votes, delivered the vote's most one-sided result of any group with 8 or more voters: just 18% yes. That sits oddly against the 35-44s, only six strong but breaking 4-2 the other way, suggesting no clean generational story so much as a dip in trust concentrated in one age band.
Gender tracked the same scepticism, with women voting 20% yes against men's 44%, though the female sample of five is too small to weigh heavily. Taken together the numbers echo the standard fault line on migration debates since 2016: broad public doubt about net fiscal and service benefits persists even when, as the background here notes, migrants are demonstrably younger, healthier and net contributors on paper.
The economics of the question and the politics of the vote, in other words, are not the same instrument.
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