My Lords, noble Lords will know the importance that I attach to numbers. This has become even more important as the number of refugees and migrants entering the UK increases, as they arrive perfectly legitimately from Hong Kong, Afghanistan and, unless disaster can be reversed, Ukraine. My Amendment 81 would require the Secretary of State to ensure that information is regularly published on immigration, including regular data on both asylum and other immigration. I am grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Green, and my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts.
Many years ago, I was the Home Office adviser in the Downing Street Policy Unit, and I discovered just how difficult it was to get up-to-date figures on the movement of people. The International Passenger Survey improved things, but although revived after a Covid break, it no longer includes the key questions on passenger arrivals or departures that the ONS needs to produce accurate statistics. Adequate data matters, whatever your position on immigration. It is vital to make provision for housing, schooling, health services and transport, and to prepare for other aspects of the care and employment of migrants.
We had a good and mature debate on Friday at the Second Reading of my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts’s Private Member’s Bill on the office for demographic change. Even if the Government were discouraging, a strong case was made for more and better work by the ONS and the Home Office on immigration and asylum data to aid long-term planning. However, today, local authorities bear the immediate impact of the need to look after migrants, and are therefore also in need of immediate and up-to-date data.
As things stand, we risk chaos when there is a surge of arrivals, yet the tone of the response in Committee, certainly in respect of asylum seekers crossing the channel, was to produce less data, including
“presenting data in a way that enhances the public’s understanding of key issues and puts the data into appropriate context, as well as the need to prioritise the department’s resources.”—[Official Report, 8/2/22; col. 1552.]
The Commons Library has produced a good report, dated 2 March, on asylum statistics, which perhaps unsurprisingly showed that in 2021 we saw the highest annual figure for asylum since 2003, up two-thirds from 2020, and that work in progress was 125,000 claims —far too high a figure. That is a lot of people waiting. I also picked up from discussions with officials that it was thought desirable to delay the logging of some immigration data for up to a year, to check whether those who had arrived remained.
My noble friend the Minister is always so helpful that I hesitate to be critical. However, taking all this together, it sounds like a move to less up-to-date data,
more spin and fewer facts and figures on which to base sound policy. Knowing the Secretary of State as I do, I am very disappointed and wonder whether this is fully understood by her. In any case, I call on my noble friend the Minister for more reassurance.
Midnight
My second amendment, Amendment 82, follows reports in the media that the publication of a regular daily or weekly count of migrants crossing the channel to the UK was being discontinued. To my mind, this is unacceptable. My amendment therefore provides for at least weekly figures published within seven days, and not all at once in quarterly updates. Rather to our surprise, my noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom indicated in Committee that this was the Government’s new approach. Given the degree of concern about channel crossings and the abuse of migrants by traffickers who lure them into dangerous boats in busy shipping lanes, I deplore this reduction in transparency.
I have tried to get to the bottom of the matter with the help of our wonderful Library, which has referred me to the data in the Home Office’s statistics on irregular migration to the UK. This is monthly data going back to January 2018, and includes data up to December 2021. It was published on 24 February 2022. It contains a good deal of information, including both the number of small boats detected and the number of people in those boats by month, and the number of people in detected small boats by nationality, age group and sex. But—and here is the rub—there does not seem to be any information available on shorter periods, such as by day or by week.
In my opinion, the change in statistical publicity will take more and more of our arrivals below the radar and could provide a further incentive to the wicked traffickers. It is a step in the wrong direction that will be regretted by those trying to deal well with migrants arriving on our shores, such as local authorities, and indeed across this House as a reduction in openness.
I am sorry that we do not have Divisions in Committee any more as I might have won the day then. However, we have a lot to get through this evening, so I am looking instead to the Government for a clear statement of their intentions on providing up-to-date figures on channel crossings, and perhaps some follow-up discussions with me. I am not going to go away on these data issues. I beg to move.