Dear Mr Gallagher,
I am writing to draw your attention to a number of recent occasions where your coverage of ONS statistics has been misleading. Your paper has claimed three times that the recent ONS report on reconciling International Passenger Survey (IPS) based migration estimates with National Insurance Number (NINo) registrations to EU citizens revealed a "three times" and "vast" underestimate of migration (13 May - Secret Migrants, 13 May - Great Migrant Swindle and 20 May - UK must build housing for migrants says EU ). You also claimed (13 May - Great Migrant Swindle) that "short term migrants were ignored because they planned to stay in the UK less than year" and (13 May - Secret Migrants) that “long term migration has also been hugely underestimated".
None of these claims are supported by the evidence.
Estimates of long-term migration based on the IPS remain unchanged and the best available.
ONS openly publishes estimates of short term migration (also based on the IPS) every year, so it was already possible for people to learn the figures for both long and short term migration. Granted, the previously published figure for short term migration (published in May 15) only covered the period to 2013 because of the inherent delay in estimating the figures based on asking questions as people leave the UK. The 2014 figures were published for the first time in the ONS report and will also feature clearly in the migration statistics to be published on 26 May. The ONS report also included provisional estimates of the range of figures that might be revealed in May 2017 when the 2015 data is ready. These estimates are based on the intentions stated as people arrive in the UK. Furthermore, there are more people leaving the UK on a short-term basis than there are arriving and, by definition, all of these return to their country of usual residence within a year.
In compiling this report, we found no evidence of an underestimate in either the short term migration or the long term migration statistics.
I hope these points will be more accurately reported in any future coverage, and would be happy to discuss further with you if that would be helpful.
Yours sincerely,
Glen Watson
Deputy National Statistician and Director General, Population and Public Policy
Office for National Statistics,
Government Buildings,
Cardiff Road,
Newport,
NP10 8XG