The UK’s immigration figures are a fantasy

Journalists filing to deadline are apt to dig only so deep when googling for statistics, which in themselves are sometimes derided as worse than damned lies. Thus we’re often suckers for ‘known facts’. Besides, if the UK’s Office for National Statistics doesn’t produce reliable data, where’s a poor scribbler to turn? Nevertheless, the current uptake of Britain’s offer of settlement status to resident EU citizens exposes even this upright organisation’s immigration statistics as, well, worse than damned lies.

Far more generous than the begrudging bureaucratic bramble of reciprocal packages on offer to Brits resident on the Continent post-Brexit, the UK’s settlement scheme for resident EU citizens had, by the end of May, received more than 5.6 million applications. The programme then had one month to go, so last-minute stragglers will likely push that number closer to six million, or fully 9 per cent of Britain’s population. What’s disconcerting? As of March last year, the ONS estimated the population of EU citizens living in the UK at 3.7