Why does immigration appear out of control? It could just be the way that we were counting

Suella Braverman has had plenty of difficult days as Home Secretary, and this week may throw up several more. On Thursday, she will be confronted with figures that are expected to show net migration reaching a record high. Predictions of 700,000 or even one million extra people living in the UK in 2022 are being quoted, which would dwarf the most recent figure of 504,000, which was in itself a record.

There has even been speculation that Mrs Braverman could resign over the issue, because she is not prepared to carry the can for a Government she believes should be doing far more to get the numbers down.

There will, however, be more to the striking figures than first meets the eye, and it is likely to be seized upon by Rishi Sunak as proof that record migration is not a problem of his own making.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS), the body responsible for compiling migration figures, has completely changed its method for counting people in and out of the country, and the Tories will argue that this is a large part of the reason that migration seems to have run out of control.

To be clear, the Government is not arguing that the figures are wrong, or that they should be lower. Instead, it will argue that the ONS has for years underestimated the number of migrants settling in the UK.

That net migration has long been higher than official statistics showed is not exactly good news for the Conservatives, but it is at least a mitigating factor for a Government that appears, at face value, to be presiding over a steeply rising curve.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, the ONS used a method called the International Passenger Survey (IPS) to estimate net migration, which in the ONS’S own words became “stretched beyond its original purpose”. In truth, it was not so much stretched as broken beyond repair.

The IPS relied on questioning a sample of passengers arriving at major ports and airports including Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester, about their reasons for entering the UK. Most were tourists, and those who were migrants were asked how long they intended to stay. Their answers were then extrapolated to give an estimate of long-term immigration, and this formed the ONS data.

Its shortcomings, if not already obvious, were exposed when the ONS realised from census data that it had completely missed the arrival of nearly 500,000 migrants from Eastern Europe, because they were using cheap Wizz Air flights that landed at airports – including Leeds and Luton – that were not covered by the IPS survey.

National Insurance data also showed huge gaps in the official figures. In some periods, three times as many National Insurance numbers were being issued to EU nationals as the number of EU nationals estimated to have arrived in the country, suggesting that hundreds of thousands of arrivals were being missed every year.

That anomaly was reinforced by the fact that more than six million EU nationals applied for settled status in the UK after Brexit – despite the fact that the ONS thought only 3.5 million were living here.

The pandemic gave the ONS a chance to get its house in order while arrivals reduced to a trickle, and the latest figures are the result of that rethink. They use hard data from the Department for Work and Pensions and the Home Office, rather than estimates based on surveys, meaning Thursday’s figures will be far more accurate than ever before – and almost certainly far higher than they would have been using IPS.

Significantly, the ONS has started recalculating historic migration figures using its new method, and will publish figures going back to 2018 alongside the headline figures for the year ending December 2022. If the revised figure for 2018 is significantly higher than the previously published figure, expect allies of Mr Sunak to defend his record by pointing out that the problem far predates his tenure.

Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory, said: “The new method is still a work in progress but once we get to the point where the methodology is settled it’s certainly true that the statistics are going to be catching more people.”

She said that other factors mean the 2022 numbers will be high, before they come down in subsequent years. Refugees from Ukraine who will be counted in the 2022 data have already

The ONS completely missed the arrival of nearly 500,000 migrants from Eastern Europe

gone home or are intending to go home soon, meaning they will count towards emigration figures for 2023.

The numbers of British Nationals (Overseas) arrivals from Hong Kong has also peaked, meaning they will contribute to the 2022 increase but not the 2023 net figure, and a recent spike in international students is inflating the figures because they have not yet started returning home in large numbers.

Ms Sumption said: “International students usually stay for one to three years, which means that if you get a big influx you would expect to see a big increase in emigration one to three years later. I would expect to see that happening between now and 2024-5, but not in the 2022 figures.”