The great immigration data disaster
by Neil O’Brien, Artillery Row:
Officials are deleting the data we need for a more sensible debate.
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.
HMRC used to publish data on the amount of tax paid by nationality (together with data on tax credit and child benefit claims). In fact I have used this data in previous posts.
At the start of December I emailed HMRC asking when the data for 2021 would be published. I got an email back from HMRC today, saying it won’t be: in fact it has been discontinued, and won’t be published again:
This follows on from a separate DWP decision to stop publishing data on welfare claims by nationality.
Those statistics had been published each year for a long time — they were certainly being published a decade ago. I asked why these statistics are no longer going to be available. Here is what they said:
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