UK migration figures are "little better than a best guess", says the House of Commons Public Administration Committee. "Oh no they're not" says the Government, with one minister, the little known Mark Harper, claiming that the statistics on offer are 'accurate' and 'robust'.
Given that our immigration service rarely checks outgoing passengers' passports and that the official figures for migration are based on a limited sample of a few thousand travellers, Mr Harper's stance seems to be a little wobbly; indeed, one would suspect that he's likely to find the ground sinking beneath him rather rapidly. His problem is that the Government has made a great play of controlling, and reducing, net immigration and any suggestion that the figures being published and the methodology used in their compilation are debatable is most unwelcome, no matter how true any such suggestions may be.
The old adage about 'lies, damned lies and statistics' still holds true and is particularly valid when politics is involved. Politicians can prove anything they like by the careful manipulation of statistics and will then lie their socks off supporting whatever they want to have 'proved'. The Public Administration Committee may be full of politicians but they are not in thrall to the Government as much as are their ministerial colleagues in Parliament; the Committee is composed of intelligent people whose job it is to scrutinise government actions and the Government will ignore their conclusions at its peril.
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