A former Tory minister has accused the Government of ‘deleting’ vital data on the impact of immigration.
Neil O’Brien MP said key information about the effects of immigration on Britain’s welfare system, tax take, crime levels and prison system is either no longer being gathered or is being withheld.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has even stopped gathering basic details on how many foreign nationals are living in Britain, Mr O’Brien said.
The MP, who previously served as a health and levelling up minister, said: ‘Whatever you think about migration policy, the one thing most people can agree on is that we should try to improve the data available to policymakers.
‘But that is not what’s happening. Quite the reverse.
‘Even the most basic data is missing.
Neil O’Brien MP said key information about the effects of immigration on Britain’s welfare system, tax take, crime levels and prison system is either no longer being gathered or is being withheld
‘We just can’t have a sensible conversation about migration if we keep deleting the data.’
In a letter to Mr O’Brien, the ONS National Statistician Professor Sir Ian Diamond wrote that the agency was reviewing its methods as part of its ‘transformation journey’.
‘There is currently no provisional publication date for further population estimates by country of birth using new methods,’ Sir Ian wrote, but the ONS aims to give an update on progress ‘later in 2024’.
In other areas, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs used to publish figures on the amount of tax paid by each nationality in the UK but that has now been ‘discontinued’, Mr O’Brien wrote in a blog.
The Department for Work and Pensions has also stopped issuing data on welfare claims by nationality.
Mr O’Brien said it was ‘perfectly reasonable’ to want data broken down by original nationality, and current nationality for migrants who may have taken British citizenship.
‘However, officials don’t want you to have that option,’ he went on.
‘I have not succeeded in finding out which minister (if any) signed off this data deletion.’
On criminal justice, the Home Office does not gather information on arrests by nationality, he said.
In a letter to Mr O’Brien, the ONS National Statistician Professor Sir Ian Diamond (pictured) wrote that the agency was reviewing its methods as part of its ‘transformation journey’
Nor will it ‘answer questions on the immigration status of prisoners, such as – were they here legally’.
Meanwhile the Ministry of Justice will not reveal how many foreign prisoners are repeat offenders.
Mr O’Brien concluded: ‘Number 10 and the Home Office should grip this and start a cross-Whitehall push to improve migration data and start joining it up.’
A government spokesman for the DWP and HMRC said: ‘We are reviewing possible data sources to enable us to report more accurately on benefit claimants’ nationality in the future.’
On ONS spokesman said: ‘The ONS is transforming the way it produces population and migration statistics using the best available data.
‘Our ambition is to produce a UK estimate of the non-UK born population that is comparable and consistent with both our admin-based estimates of international migration and our overall UK population estimates.
‘We’ll be providing an update on this important work later this year.’
