EU migration closes gap on non-EU migration into UK

The ONS has this morning published another set of updated migration figures. As always they make interesting reading with respect to EU migration - many eyes are on the figures for Romanians and Bulgarians in particular.

As the graph above shows, net immigration from the EU increased from 82,000 in 2012 to 124,000 in 2013. While non-EU immigration still accounts for a larger share of the total, the gap has narrowed significantly recently. This jump in EU migration has not been driven by an increase in one particular group, inflows from EU 15, EU 8 and Bulgaria and Romania have all increased.

Looking a bit deeper, it’s clear that these different groups of migrants have very different reasons for moving to the UK. As the ONS graph above highlights, the number of non-EU migrants moving to the UK for work has fallen steadily while those from the EU, and EU 15 in particular, have increased quickly. Furthermore, as the graph below highlights, work related reasons dominate EU migration but non-EU migration is now mostly driven by studying or family migration.

Perhaps the most interesting figure from all of this data though is the sharp rise in the number of Bulgarians and Romanians applying for national insurance numbers in the year up to March 2014 – which jumped by 7,000 and 29,000 respectively.  This is over the past year, not in a single quarter, so broadly fits with the previously released figures (which we analysed here) which showed that 29,000 workers from these countries had moved to the UK in the past year. So there's a gap between people from these countries who got a NIN on the one hand and who are working on the other. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that the 7,000 who make up the difference are on benefits (as the periods don't necessarily overlap).

In any case, as the ONS itself points out, the overall impact of removing transitional controls will not be clear for some time, will full data for 2014 not out till mid-2015. Still, Ukip and others are likely to run with these figures.

Why is the UK so bad at counting people who come and go?

The ONS has now admitted that its figures for net migration into the UK were underestimated for the best part of a decade. For the period 2001-2012 it has said that 346,000 more people came to the UK than under its previous count. That the migration figures are liable to revision should be no surprise as the underlying original data - the International Passenger Survey (IPS) - is (as the name suggests) only a survey. The UK Government doesn't properly count who comes and leaves. However, the underestimation is still startling. 

Of the newly found 346,000 (the green line charted below) it is assumed that most of it can be accounted for by EU migration.

Source ONS

As we can see from the purple line net EU migration picked up after 2003 peaking in 2007 at over 100,000 per year. This coincides with the period of the majority of the ONS under-counting. The ONS believes its under-counting was due to a failure to recognise the large numbers of EU migrants coming through regional airports. Under the original IPS figures for the 1996-2011 period, a net figure of 3.9 million came into the UK of which 800,000 were from the EU. So who are the newly discovered 346,000 and how many EU migrants did actually come to the UK?

The answer is that we do not know. The 2011 census, which is a more accurate dataset, suggested that there were 2.7 million EU migrants in the UK of which 1.1 million had come from the 'new' post 2004 accession states. But this may itself be an underestimate and will include a large number of longer term migrants. It is likely that the ONS is right to suspect that their figures for EU migrants were underestimated but unless the UK starts counting people in and out we will never accurately know.

This is one of the biggest problems with the EU migration debate: the absence of reliable data and information erodes public trust in free movement. Yes, EU membership involves some loss of control over the border. But the UK is still out of the Schengen 'passport free' zone and other countries - via more effective identification (a complicated discussion in itself), taxation and border systems - are far better than the UK at counting.