Immigration Statistics

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

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.

[Baroness Hamwee (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?

[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.