-
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether it is their objective
to maintain authoritative immigration statistics to allow the
development of sound policies and plans for the future.
-
(Con)
My Lords, the Government are fully committed to complete and
authoritative migration statistics. These are produced by the
independent Office for National Statistics following best
international practice and are overseen by the UK Statistics
Authority. The ONS has embarked on an ambitious programme of
work to improve migration statistics and the Government are
supporting this programme, including by providing the ONS
with access to data held by government departments.
-
(Con)
My Lords, it is good to hear that the Government are trying
to improve matters but does the Minister agree that, as the
Brexit vote showed, the public do not have confidence in UK
immigration policy? If this is to change, we need more
reliable statistics, not least to inform the need for
investment in housing, schools, medical infrastructure and
even benefits. Can the Minister confirm that the forthcoming
White Paper will address this issue and include honest
forecasts?
-
I agree that the public should have confidence in the
statistics produced by the ONS, particularly on migration.
These are an important input to policies on housing, health,
education and other public services. The ONS will use powers
in the Digital Economy Act, which has recently passed into
legislation, to access data from other government
departments. This will complement the information it already
has from the IPS. By accessing not only exit data from the
Home Office but information from HMRC, from the DfE on school
rolls and from GPs on GP lists, it will be able to strengthen
and enrich—the word it has used—the statistics on migration,
and in turn this will enhance confidence. The Government do
not make forecasts on migration but the ONS produces what it
calls estimates.
-
(Lab)
Is there any serious member of Her Majesty’s Government—with
the possible exception of the Prime Minister—who does not
believe that overseas students should not be included in
immigration statistics? Is it not time that this change was
made and a message of hope given to our universities?
-
The noble Lord will recall that this issue was debated
extensively by your Lordships when the then Higher Education
and Research Bill went through this House. When the Bill left
this House an amendment was carried to delete overseas
students from the migration figures. When that legislation
hit the statute book, that bit was omitted. In the meantime,
the ONS will continue to follow the UN standard, which is to
count anyone who is here for more than a year as a long-term
migrant. That practice is followed by the USA, New Zealand,
Canada and Australia. There is an impact on services if
people stay here for longer than a year, and the ONS, which
is independent, has decided to continue to use the United
Nations definition.
-
(CB)
Does the Minister recognise that his description of the Bill
that left this House was not entirely accurate? It required
the Government to change not the statistics but the policy;
and to stop treating students as economic migrants, not to
stop counting them. Would he further recognise that defective
statistical methods have been used to count students leaving
after the end of their student visas—one of the false reasons
the Government have used to justify their policy?
-
It is not the case that the Government’s policy has deterred
international students from coming to this country. According
to the latest figures, study-related visas were up by 8% in
2017 to more than 220,000. The Government have made it
absolutely clear that there is no cap on the number of
genuine international students coming to this country—they
are welcome. We are the second most popular destination after
the United States for such students and roughly 40% of our
overseas students now come from China, in a competitive
market.
-
(Lab)
Does the Minister recognise that for more than 25 years
immigration statistics have been neither authoritative nor
accurate either in their generality or in their specifics?
When will the Government finally recognise that only an
accurate system of counting people in and out will give us
such authoritative and accurate statistics, and the only way
to do that is through biometric ID cards and visas?
-
The point made by the noble Lord was also made by the Home
Affairs Select Committee in another place. One of the
recommendations echoes what he just said:
“We also recommend that the Home Office examine how all
entries and exits from major ports in the UK, including for
non-visa travellers, can be recorded and that all entry and
exit information is then used to aid the analysis of
migration flow and to better inform policy decisions”.
The Government will respond to that recommendation before
Easter and I am sure that they will take on board the support
expressed for that policy by the noble Lord and indeed by
others.
-
(LD)
My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord will agree that
statistics do not exist in a vacuum and that it is important
to work on them to show a clear picture both of the
contribution made by immigrants and of the competition, if
that is what it is, that they may present to UK nationals in
the labour market. The noble Lord mentioned information from
HMRC. Does he agree that it would be useful to be clear about
how much tax immigrants working in this country pay towards
our society?
-
I am sure that the noble Baroness is right. Speaking from
memory, I think that tax revenue from the cohort that she
mentioned exceeds the amount of benefits paid to those
people. I do not have the exact statistics in front of me,
but I am sure that one can make available the net
contribution of migrants to this country to the labour
market.
-
(Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that reliance on the
International Passenger Survey is totally inadequate? The
chairman of the public administration committee said recently
that the immigration figures are little better than a best
guess, while the Royal Geographical Society has said that
they are not fit for purpose. Asking less than 0.6% of people
who arrive in this country about their intentions without any
corroboration or follow-up is surely a wholly inadequate way
to measure these statistics.
-
The IPS interviews 800,000 people per year, which is quite a
broad base for a sample. When I asked the ONS about this, it
confirmed that the IPS survey continues to be the best source
of information to measure long-term international migration.
However, as I said in response to my noble friend, it will
strengthen that information by accessing data from other
government sources which it could not access before. That
will enhance the credibility of these figures, and the ONS
plans to use the system I have just outlined by the end of
2019 with regular updates. As I have said, this will produce
a richer set of statistics.
