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Conservative MP David Davis
Tory MP David Davis has said he believes the number of NI numbers issued to EU migrants has been far higher than the official immigration figures. Photograph: Niklas Halle'N/AFP/Getty Images
Tory MP David Davis has said he believes the number of NI numbers issued to EU migrants has been far higher than the official immigration figures. Photograph: Niklas Halle'N/AFP/Getty Images

Number of EU migrants working in UK to be revealed weeks before referendum

This article is more than 7 years old

HMRC will provide national insurance figures, which could prove immigration has been seriously underestimated

The number of EU migrants working in the UK will finally be revealed just weeks before the referendum on Britain’s EU membership – in a move that could prove immigration has been seriously underestimated by official statistics.

HM Revenue and Customs will provide figures on how many national insurance numbers are actively being used by people from the European Economic Area after MPs mounted a battle to gain access to the statistics.

Earlier this year, the prime minister also agreed to push for the release after David Davis, a senior Tory MP, said he believed the number of NI numbers issued to EU migrants has been hundreds of thousands higher than the official immigration figures.

“That implies that the official immigration figures may be a dramatic underestimate,” Davis told David Cameron in the House of Commons.

“We can know the truth of the matter only if Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs releases its data on active EU national insurance numbers, but HMRC has refused to do so. Will the prime minister instruct HMRC to release those statistics immediately so that we can understand the truth about European Union immigration?”

If Davis’s conclusions are confirmed, Brexit campaigners are likely to seize on the figures as evidence that EU immigration has been deliberately understated in government statistics.

Official immigration data shows that about 800,000 EU migrants have settled in the UK in the last four years, a figure based on surveys of people entering Britain. However, about 2 million EU migrants have been given NI numbers over that time. The data requested from HMRC would show how many are actively being used.

The figures are scheduled to be handed to the Commons Treasury select committee by the end of this month, after it requested the data last year.

Downing Street confirmed on Sunday night that the figures would be released, while sources stressed they had not been published yet only because the work had not yet been done.

A No 10 spokesman said: “The prime minister told the Commons last month that he would continue to ensure HMRC provide greater information on national insurance numbers. HMRC wrote to the Treasury select committee last week to confirm it will be working to provide the Office for National Statistics with additional data.”

Lin Homer, the head of HMRC, confirmed the figures would be provided in a letter to the Treasury committee, saying it had been delayed because of the time needed to combine several datasets.

Lin Homer, head of HMRC. Photograph: Ian Nicholson/PA

“We are working closely with ONS and will be providing our data and analysis to them once it has been compiled, to allow them to combine it with their own data, analysis and quality assurance work and thereby produce a fuller picture. Our analysis will then be published either as part of the ONS’ publication or alongside it.”

Andrew Tyrie, the chair of the Treasury committee, said he had received a firm commitment from HMRC in the letter and expected it to be published within weeks.

“This has been obtained as a result of a good deal of persistence,” he said. “Since receiving it, I have pressed further, receiving an assurance that it should be possible to supply the information to the committee before the end of this month. Late, but a good deal better than never. I recognise that HMRC may have encountered some difficulties. So I am glad that they have found a way of resolving them.”

The data was originally requested by Jonathan Portes, a former chief economist at the Cabinet Office, who now works for the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR). In a blogpost at the time, he said he expected it would show immigration has been underestimated in official statistics but he could not be sure without the actual figures.

“My current expectation is that it would reveal there are actually considerably more such recent migrants than the official immigration or labour market statistics actually suggest. But I don’t know that and I’m quite willing to be proved wrong,” he wrote.

Portes also suggested that refusing to release the information could feed “paranoia and mistrust in official statistics” such as myths about the country being “awash with millions of uncounted illegal immigrants”.

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