The Government must stop hiding the true costs of immigration

Immigration is consistently one of the top three issues for people in polls. Its impact on the economy, the welfare state, and crime is enormous. So you'd think there would be a strong drive in government to provide the most detailed, thorough information possible to inform the public debate. Unfortunately that doesn't happen.

That's the argument made by a new campaign launched by Matt Goodwin and backed by all five of Reform's MPs, who have written to the prime minister. It builds on work by Conservative MP Neil O'Brien, who has tirelessly questioned the authorities to find out what data is missing.

What they've found is a gap at the heart of one of the most important areas of government. Think about data like the amount of tax paid according to national origin. This is obviously very useful for guiding immigration policy, as we'd much rather have people from countries who tend to pay lots of tax rather than from countries where they pay very little.

Some of those low paid immigrants might be doing valuable work but they are likely a net cost to the taxpayer, whether because they receive benefits or because they help push up prices in our tightly constrained housing market, or because they use public infrastructure like roads or hospitals. Without that data, the government is left blind when setting immigration policy.

The same is true when it comes to welfare costs, which help establish whether migrants are a net cost or benefit by allowing us to compare how much tax they pay to how much taxpayer money they receive. Yet the Department of Work and Pensions have announced that they will no longer be publishing these statistics.

Another important area is crime, where the Home Office doesn't collect data on the nationality of those they arrest. They do collect data on whether people they arrest are here legally but they refuse to publish it. The Ministry of Justice publishes data on how many foreign nationals are in prison but won't say whether any of them are repeat offenders.

In some cases civil servants may not want to collect data for fear of what they will find but in other cases it seems to be bureaucratic inertia over the complicated and expensive process of joining up disparate databases. But many European countries already collect this sort of detailed data, which connects together data from every department, and is often able to track migrants and their descendents over several generations.

Studies like that from countries like Denmark and Holland have shown a significant divide between immigrants from Western countries like Japan and the USA compared to those from Africa and the Middle East. On average a Japanese immigrant to Holland provides €250,000 more in tax than they cost. However, an immigrant from the Horn of Africa costs €600,000 more on average than they contribute.

Similarly the Danes were able to show that in 2022, while 15.2 per cent of the population was made up of immigrants or their descendents, they made up 29.7 per cent of those convicted for crimes, including a disproportionate number of rapes and robberies. When the government decides who should be allowed to immigrate to Britain, we should want them to make sure that those coming here don't pose a threat to the British people.

This isn't about demonising immigrants. On the contrary, more data should enable a more dispassionate debate. If immigrants to Britain really are very fiscally beneficial or commit little crime , then pro-immigration advocates should want to be able to prove that.

It's the absence of information which produces so much rancour. Instead, this is about understanding how immigration is changing our society and helping the government to make better-informed choices on immigration policy. Labour should commit to being honest with the British people – and publish the data.