The BBC’s immigration scare story

The BBC’s enthusiasm for anything that might undermine the Government’s immigration policy was demonstrated yet again by the excitable tone of last night’s Newsnight report (above). The thrust of the item was that a key element of the government’s case for restricting immigration had been undermined by a report written by Home Office officials but allegedly supressed by Number 10.

As usual, the context was entirely absent. The original report quoted by the Home Secretary was by the Migration Advisory Committee who have a very high reputation in these matters.  They were the first to put a number on the extent of displacement but, like all other researchers, they faced a fundamental difficulty in getting results that are statistically significant given that new immigrants are a small part of our workforce. Evidence to the House of Lords report on the economics of migration pointed out (pdf, para 83) that the absence of statistically significant evidence was not evidence that the effect was small.