Immigration and Nationality Statistics

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Nick Timothy]

I certainly agree that most people crossing the channel are not really seeking refuge, because they are coming from a safe country: France. They are seeking their economic betterment, which may be legitimate from their perspective, but is not necessarily in our interests as a country.

I must be honest: my party played its part in this policy failure. I say “policy failure” because, at times—certainly when I worked in the Home Office and, I think, when my hon. Friend the Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam) was in the Home Office—there was a genuine attempt to get the numbers down. Indeed, back in those years, the numbers fell, but ultimately we failed, thanks to free movement rules, a loss of wider political support for our work across Government, and a failure to reform the higher and further education system, public services and the wider economy, so as to get off the addiction to more and more migration.

Brexit should have changed all that. It was a clear vote not only to reclaim our sovereignty, but to reduce and control immigration, but the points-based system that followed, with its hugely liberal rules, was always bound to increase the numbers dramatically. For that, my party will need to show sincere contrition and, if we are ever to win again, demonstrate to the public that we truly get it and have a plan to cut immigration drastically.

To inform the policy choices we face and help us to understand what we must do with the millions of newcomers who have started new lives here in the past 25 years or so, we also need much better data. Low-paid immigrants bring costs that are not adequately considered by Government impact assessments. They need housing, drive on roads, use transport, have health needs, take school places, claim benefits and eventually receive the state pension, which was recently valued by an actuary at £250,000 per person. Most immigrants and their dependants will, over their lifetimes, be net recipients of public funds.

However, the British state does not even try to calculate the net fiscal costs and benefits of different profiles of migrant. We get fragments of information from, say, the census, or prison statistics. We know that 72% of Somalis here, for example, live in social housing, compared with 16% of the population overall. We know that one in 50 Albanians here are in prison, and that nationalities such as Iraqis, Jamaicans and Somalis are disproportionately likely to be criminals. We know from now-discontinued income tax data that some nationalities, such as Bangladeshis, receive more in child benefit and tax credits than they pay in income tax and national insurance. That does not even include the costs of education, housing, healthcare, pensions, and other effects on infrastructure and services.

Some European countries have started to do the necessary work. In Denmark, for example, official figures show that Danes and Europeans are net contributors, but migrants and their descendants from the middle east, north Africa, Pakistan and Turkey are net recipients throughout their whole lives, including when they are working.

I have asked various Ministers in oral and written questions whether the Government will commission work to establish the true cost of immigration broken down by profile of migrant. The answer that comes back more often than not is that that has not been done before. However, that is not a reason not to do it now. My first question to the Minister is: if it is not to be done, why not? Can she give us a justification?

I have asked similar questions on specific aspects of policy. The Department for Work and Pensions told me in a letter that

“we are investigating the feasibility of developing and publishing statistics on the immigration status of non-UK/Irish”

nationals, or “customers”, as it bizarrely calls foreign benefits claimants. My second question is: what discussions has the Minister had with counterparts in the DWP about that? When will that work be completed? Will the data be broken down by nationality, visa route and type of benefit?

We know bits of information on social housing from the census, as I said, but that is not good enough. Only yesterday, a grotesque online video was published by Westminster city council promoting social housing in Arabic, Bengali, Spanish and French, which, given the rules around no recourse to public funds, I found somewhat surprising. My third question is: what discussions has the Minister had with counterparts in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government about that? Can we get annual data on social housing occupation by nationality, visa and asylum status?

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that some excellent work on the issue of data and immigration has been done by our hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O’Brien), who has been a cheerleader for getting the kind of information that would help us inform public policy? As he is talking about social housing, does he share my concerns that the Labour Government seem to be moving away from some of the provisions we put in place to prioritise British people for housing?

[Nick Timothy]

I endorse that entirely and pay tribute to our hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O'Brien) for the excellent work he has done. He was the first Member of this House to talk about what he calls the “data desert” when it comes to immigration.

On criminal justice policy, the Justice Secretary very recently refused to answer in the Chamber when I asked if the Government would publish the nationality, visa and asylum status of all imprisoned offenders. My fourth question is: why did she refuse to do that? Why can the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice not come together to publish that data?

There are many other areas of policy, but I want to turn to the Home Office in particular. The Home Secretary told the House of Commons in July that the Rwanda policy had cost the taxpayer £700 million by the time Labour had come to power and that by ending the retrospective element of the duty to remove in the Illegal Migration Act 2023, she would save the public £7 billion over 10 years. Those numbers were clearly preposterous, and Home Office officials got in touch with me to express their concern about the things she said on the Floor of the House. The National Audit Office had said in March that the Rwanda scheme’s total cost was only £290 million, which included a £50 million payment made between its study and the general election. To be fair, the NAO costs did not include some things, such as the cost of detaining migrants. However, those costs would have had to have been met without the Rwanda scheme anyway, and it is difficult to understand what might justify a £410 million difference between what the NAO said and what the Home Secretary said on the Floor of the House of Commons.

In a letter to the shadow Home Secretary copied to me, the Home Office permanent secretary gave a breakdown—if it can be called a breakdown—of the costs behind the £700 million claim that ludicrously lumped together £278 million under the title “Other fixed costs” with very little description of what that means. My fifth question is: can the Minister tell us specifically what those costs are? Will she hand over all the relevant data to the Office for Statistics Regulation? Can she commit to placing in the Library a detailed set of accounts to justify that number?

In a separate letter to me, the permanent secretary justified the discrepancy by claiming that the NAO report had not included some “expected” Home Office costs. That makes no sense because “expected” implies costs that had not been incurred in March when the NAO report was published, but the Home Office now says that those costs were incurred between 2022-23 and June in 2024-25. In his letter to me, Sir Matthew said:

“Further detail is contained within the impact assessment that accompanied the retrospection statutory instrument that was laid before Parliament.”

But again, the impact assessment models costs in the future, not the past, so I have a sixth question. When the Home Secretary said that the £700 million had already been spent in July, why was her permanent secretary talking about prospective costs in August? Why did he refer to an impact assessment based on future costs, not costs already incurred?

On my seventh question, when the immigration Minister, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), debated this issue with me in Westminster Hall in September, she promised to write to me to explain those discrepancies. Why did she not do so? Can the Minister tell us why the Home Secretary still has not replied to my letter of 21 September, despite written answers on 22 October and 25 November promising to do so as soon as possible?

Finally, I have asked Ministers in the Home Office and the Foreign Office about the secretive deal to bring Sri Lankan asylum seekers from Diego Garcia to Britan, even though the Government are under no obligation to do so. Home Office officials are worried that among those migrants are criminals and even child abusers. The Home Office said:

“Migrants with criminal convictions, charges, or subject to ongoing investigations were not in scope for that relocation.”

However, in a written answer to me, the immigration Minister refused to say whether the Government had sought or obtained the necessary information from the Sri Lankan Government. On 14 November, the Foreign Office Minister, the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), answered my question, saying that the Government

“does not have any information about Sri Lankan migrants’ criminality that pre-dates their arrival on British Indian Ocean Territory.”

On 9 December, the immigration Minister answered another of my questions and said:

“The local UK police force in the area where the migrants have been located have been informed of their arrival in the UK.”

That does not sound very reassuring, and there are clear discrepancies between what the Home Office and Foreign Office have said. The fact that the police have had to be notified about the arrival of those migrants would be very alarming to people who live in those areas, if the public actually knew where those migrants are.

For my eighth and final question, can the Minister confirm that the Government have no idea about the criminal records of those migrants dating to their time in Sri Lanka? What on earth are the Government doing importing migrants, for whom we have no legal responsibility, into this country in such secrecy when there are concerns about them inside the Home Office, and without undertaking every conceivable security check?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Seema Malhotra)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I thank the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) and congratulate him on securing this important debate. I also thank my colleagues from across the House who have contributed.

There has been an important focus today on statistics, which I welcome because this Government believe in making good use of facts and evidence when delivering policy. Various points have been raised, and I want to come back to all of them, but, if I do miss any, I hope that Members will allow me to respond to some of their points in writing. I also recognise that the Minister for Border Security and Asylum, my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), is unable to be here today.

Before I address Members’ points, I want to make a few remarks reflecting on the immigration system that the Government inherited. The hon. Member for West Suffolk alluded to the situation that we found, and it is worth reflecting on what the latest official figures show because they shocked us all. Under the previous Government, net migration grew almost five times higher in four years—and is still four times higher—-than it was before the pandemic, driven heavily by an increase in overseas recruitment. The Home Secretary and the Prime Minister have both been extremely clear that net migration needs to come down. We are, therefore, continuing with visa controls, which we supported when they were introduced by the previous Government. However, we are also clear that much more needs to be done to restore order and credibility to the system. That is why—

[Julia Lopez]

Will the Minister give way?

[Seema Malhotra]

I will make some remarks; I know the hon. Lady has already contributed.

That is why we are pursuing a new approach to end the overreliance on international recruitment by ensuring that the immigration, skills and training systems are properly aligned in a way they have not previously been. Further details of our plans to reduce net migration will be set out in the forthcoming White Paper. I am sure the hon. Member for West Suffolk will want to contribute and bring his own experience in government, which I do respect. I am sure he will also want to engage on how we build the solutions and the architecture that we need for a new part of how Government works, working across the Home Office, skills and our future needs, as well as on how we ensure that we are supporting migrants into work, which is also part of the role of the DWP.

Let me turn to some of the issues raised in the debate. It is worth saying that the issue of dangerous small boat crossings has been a phenomenon of the last five or six years. There has been an increase from 300 people coming in 2018 to an average of over 36,000 a year in the last three years—a 120-fold increase. We cannot deny that, in a few short years, an entire criminal smuggler industry has been built around boat crossings, and that has also been allowed to take hold across the UK border. The cost of the asylum system also increased by more than five times to £5.4 billion between 2019-20 and last year. Returns of those with no right to be here are 30% lower than they were in 2010, and asylum-related returns were down by 20% compared with 14 years ago. That was the legacy we inherited from the previous Government, and former Ministers themselves have admitted it was shameful.

On the calls for more data, the Home Office and the Office for National Statistics publish a very wide range of statistical information on a regular basis. Our country’s statisticians, and those working in my Department and other Departments, are in fact world leaders in the production of statistics and analysis on the topic of migration. I am sure that the hon. Member for West Suffolk will know that the UK publishes, I believe, more statistics on migration than any other country. The content and presentation of official statistics is kept under review and that regular oversight allows us to balance the production of regular statistics with the need to develop new statistics and statistical products for future release. We remain committed to the issues of transparency and ensuring that public and parliamentary debates are informed by robust and accurate statistics, and to keeping statistics under review.

The hon. Member for West Suffolk raised a few comments on some of his correspondence and it would be helpful to refer to some of that. I assure him that the Home Office has received his letter of 1 September and is due to respond in due course. The breakdown of £700 million in costs, which the hon. Member inquired about, has been published on gov.uk and sets out the cost of the Rwanda partnership and the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which were inseparable. The purpose of the IMA was to prevent individuals arriving in the UK from remaining here, and Rwanda was intended to be a vehicle for enabling that. To try and separate them is deliberately misrepresenting the true cost of what was clearly a failed policy.