Failures of government departments to track their own processes, and gaps in official statistics on the migrant population are hampering both public debate and sound policy design on immigration, according to research by the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory.
In a report published today, researchers reveal the ten most significant gaps in the information base politicians and the public use to understand the role and impact of migration to and from the UK.
The list (in no particular order of importance) is:
- There are gaps in the data about immigration enforcement and returns
- There isn’t enough clarity about how many migration cases are affected by human rights laws
- The size of the unauthorised population is unknown
- There is inadequate data about migrants’ economic outcomes and how they change over time
- More accurate data on the population by nationality and immigration status is needed
- There is inadequate information about what happens to people claiming asylum before or after they make their initial claim
- Data about who is migrating to and from the UK is insufficient to properly understand population change
- Official data on migration and crime is full of holes
- Local migration figures don’t give us a clear or coherent picture
- There is not enough information about the impact of migration on public services or on government spending
One theme to the gaps is that a poorly linked system of record-keeping makes it hard to know what happens when people don’t follow a straightforward migration journey.
Dr Peter Walsh, senior researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said: “These evidence gaps are particularly challenging when trying to track asylum seekers through the immigration system: official data can’t tell us much about what happens to asylum seekers who are refused but not returned, or what type and sequence of appeals some people make when told they must leave the UK. These are important questions, especially at a time when the government plans to reorganise the immigration and asylum appeals system.”
A further data gap is that there it is difficult to understand, from the available data, how many immigration cases are affected by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), because we know very little about who and how many people apply for and are granted human rights-based permission to live in the UK, or successfully challenge their removal.
Dr Madeleine Sumption, Director of the Migration Observatory, said “The UK’s membership of ECHR is a major issue in public debate, in large part due to its impacts on migration policy. But the current data can’t give us a clear picture of where and when it has most impact. This makes it harder for the public or policymakers to make an informed choice about an important decision with long-term repercussions for the UK.”
Another area of uncertainty is on the size of the migrant population and how it breaks down by local area or migrants’ characteristics. The last Census is now several years old and high migration post-Brexit will have had significant impacts on previous trends. Falling response rates to the ONS’s Labour Force Survey – a problem affecting statistics more broadly – have wiped out what little data used to be available on migrants’ activities at the local level and their detailed characteristics.
Georgina Sturge, research affiliate for the Migration Observatory and author of the report said: “Local authorities and government officials need to understand who lives where to plan services, but it’s very difficult to get a good picture of what has happened at the local level since the Census. At the national level, a lack of data on migrant populations hampers efforts to examine several other questions, such as the rates at which different groups of migrants receive benefits like Universal Credit and the likely impacts of changes in who is eligible”
Despite the challenges and ongoing shortfalls in immigration statistics, the report strikes a hopeful tone when it comes to the potential for improvement.
The report suggests that recent one-off exercises to link different datasets together – such as HMRC and Home Office immigration data – are a promising blueprint for what more could be done. It also welcomes recent changes to how the Office for National Statistics (ONS) measures non-EU migration.
Georgina Sturge added, “The challenges the UK faces in properly getting to grips with migration data are often because the issue of migration is hugely complex and interacts with every part of society and government. IT systems that collect the records are often not up to the job. That said, new approaches already being piloted have the potential to improve things significantly, and several recent investments are already bearing fruit.”
Examples of newly available data that improve the understanding of migration include earnings data for skilled workers that has been used to generate fiscal impact assessments; statistics on how asylum seekers originally arrived in the UK (e.g. on visas or unauthorised routes); and figures showing emigration of EU and non-EU citizens by visa category.
