UK officials ‘miss’ up to 300,000 migrants from EU

HUNDREDS of thousands of European immigrants have been missed from defective official migration counts, it was revealed yesterday.

The rate at which migration from EU countries – mainly in Eastern Europe – was pushing up Britain’s population was undercounted by 300,000 in the eight years leading up to the 2016 Brexit referendum.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) yesterday admitted the ‘limitations’ in its main method for measuring immigration over the last six decades – the International Passenger Survey. The survey merely asks a sample of passengers about their intention to stay in, or leave, Britain – but does not check whether they follow up on this.

As a result, the ONS regulator has downgraded its migration

‘Critical to have reliable figures’

figures from official statistics to ‘experimental’ status.

At the same time EU migrants were being undercounted, the net immigration total from the rest of the world was being overestimated – largely because many foreign students leaving Britain were missed.

The disastrous errors in the migration figures may have had a major impact on the politics of Brexit. Politicians may have underestimated public concern about Eastern European immigration and its effects on wages and social cohesion.

The ONS acknowledged that the scale of its failure is such that it can not provide accurate estimates of European immigration since the summer of 2016.

Ed Humpherson, chief regulator at the UK Statistics Authority, said: ‘It remains critical for decision makers to have reliable migration estimates.’