Immigration Statistics

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

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.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (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.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

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.