Immigration control is impossible without the right data
by Tom Jones, Conservative Home:
When, late last year, a team led by mathematician Jan H. van de Beek at the University of Amsterdam produced a study that estimated migration had cost the Dutch government €17 billion per year between 1995-2019, questions were raised about whether immigration into Britain might have incurred similar costs.
Britain’s debate about immigration is so data-poor, however, it is unlikely such an in-depth study could ever be conducted. And things may be about to get worse before they get better.
Last week, Neil O’Brien revealed that the data desert in which our immigration debate is held is growing even more arid. In a Substack post, he wrote that he had emailed HMRC asking why data on the amount of tax paid by nationality hadn’t been published. The department had told him that the data was no longer being published. He noted that this followed DWP reaching a separate decision to stop publishing data on welfare claims by nationality.
The decision to discontinue the publication of this data appears to have been reached on spurious grounds; HMRC’s decision followed a consultation on ‘changes to HMRC statistics publications’. The section in question, asking for confirmation on the decision ‘to discontinue the annual Income Tax, NICs, tax credits and child benefit statistics for non-UK nationals release’, received just two responses. As for the DWP’s decision, I haven’t found any evidence that this decision was put out for consultation – nor that it was a Ministerial decision.
Its questionable what – if any – benefit there is to stopping publishing this data. Both decisions were couched in vague appeals to improving the accuracy of data, or that the data wasn’t relevant. In her reply to his questioning of the DWP decision, Jo Churchill made a statement stating that publication of this information had ceased on the grounds that ‘the information contained in the release reflected the nationality status of the benefit claimants at the point of National Insurance number (NINo) registration, which does not necessarily reflect the nationality at the point of claiming the benefit.’ But given the department doesn’t publish data on nationality at the point of claiming benefit either, this seems spurious.
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