The real immigration lie

Yet again, New Labour’s predilection for spin and misleading statistics has landed the government in trouble. Ministers have long been fond of making the argument for immigration on the basis that it increases the country’s GDP. But as the House of Lords Economics Affairs Committee rightly points out in its new report, adding more people to the population will lead — barring a recession — to a higher GDP. So this is hardly a clinching argument for immigration. After all, the fact that Turkey’s GDP is larger than that of Switzerland scarcely means that the Turks are better off than the Swiss.

The report also concluded that immigration does little for per capita GDP — a far more important statistic. And from the furore surrounding this, one would have thought that the economic case for immigration had been holed below the water line. But a close reading of the report shows that this is not the case.