Pandemic means UK can no longer track how many migrants are entering or leaving country

Data suggests migrant population fell by nearly 900,000 in 2020, yet an extra 1.25 million UK-born people 'appeared' in figures

Migrants in a dinghy sail in the Channel toward the south coast of England on September 1, 2020 after crossing from France
Migrants in a dinghy sail in the Channel toward the south coast of England on September 1, 2020 after crossing from France Credit: GLYN KIRK/AFP 

The pandemic means the UK can no longer track how many migrants are entering or leaving the UK, says a University of Oxford report.

The university’s Migration Observatory said it meant policymakers were effectively “flying blind” when planning for the impact of migration on schools, hospitals, transport and other local services.

The problem has arisen because the Covid-19 pandemic has meant face-to-face interviews for migrant and population surveys have been suspended for up to 10 months.

It meant key measures of migration and population, such as the international passenger and labour force surveys, have been disrupted and cannot be relied on for accurate data. The same is also true of National Insurance numbers, another indicator, said the observatory.

“There is absolutely massive uncertainty about what is going on with migration at the moment, because all the data sources we normally use have been hugely disrupted,” said Madeleine Sumption, the observatory’s director. 

“This has left us flying blind just as the UK is introducing a new immigration system, and will make it more difficult to understand the impacts of new policies.” 

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The observatory said it meant the UK no longer had reliable data on how many immigrants arrived in the UK in 2020, how many emigrants have left the UK in 2020, their impact on the UK’s total population and how the characteristics of the migrant groupings have changed since 2019.

It noted that labour force survey data suggested the migrant population fell by nearly 900,000 in 2020. Yet, an extra 1.25 million UK-born people had “appeared’ in the figures despite there being no plausible demographic driver for an increase in the UK-born population. 

The observatory analysis showed that while there did appear to have been a decline in the UK’s migrant population in 2020, it was likely to be smaller than headline figures suggest. It found that the strongest evidence of a decline in the migrant population was in London.

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