Phil Woolas explains (update)

A few days back I blogged about Phil Woolas's appearance on the Daily Politics show and his 'explanation' of the immigration/new jobs figures. At the time I said that 'I am confused... ' Well it seems that Andrew Neil has decided to investigate Phil Woolas's claims further, do read the whole piece but here are a few extracts (my emphasis): '...I've now had a chance to study the transcript and to read the statistical explanatory note which goes with the ONS survey. Here are the facts:

...

2. It does not distinguish between immigrants and non-immigrants nor temporary or permanent workers. It simply establishes if you are working in Britain at the time of the snapshot and, among other things, asks if you are foreign or British born. This question -- and the definition of foreign-born -- is laid down by Eurostat, on whose behalf the Survey is down. Brussels controls the definitions and parameters so that it can make like-for-like comparisons across the EU.

3. Though, contrary to the minister's claims, the Survey does not distinguish between immigrant or temporary workers, its rules would tend not to count temporary foreign-born workers. The Statistical note explains: this Survey "is a Survey of private households and excludes people in communal establishments (eg hostels, students living in halls of residence) and people who have lived in the UK for less than six months. Arguably the excluded groups are likely to include disproportionately large numbers of migrants. It would be reasonable to infer from this that estimates of migrant/foreign worker numbers based on the LFS may be a little lower than they should be." (My italics)

4. Let's just pause to reflect what that means: temporary migrants tend to live in communal residencies and many might be here for less than six months. So the Survey is almost certainly an underestimate of the number of foreign-born workers in the British labour force at any one time.

5. Just to be clear, there is no double-counting: to return to the Minister's analogy, the Survey would not pick up the cumulative numbers at an Arsenal game over time -- just the crowd at the particular Arsenal game when the Survey was taken.

6. The number of foreign-born workers in the British labour force has doubled since 1997 (from 1.5m to 2.8m). It is true that foreign-born could apply to the offspring of expats whose children were born abroad, who are now of working age and who have returned to these shores. It even applies to Boris Johnson (who was born in America). But there is no evidence of a massive return of expats since 1997 (indeed the momentum has been the other way). Though the Survey is not directly concerned with immigration it is hard not to conclude that the huge rise of foreign-born in the labour force is directly related to the huge rise in immigration since 1997. If there's another explanation I'd be grateful for it.

Now there are many possible official responses to these figures. Ministers could argue that it is a good thing that foreign workers have come here to do jobs which British-born folk have shunned. They could also point out that there are hundreds of thousands of Brits working and living abroad and that national labour forces are a two-way street in the age of globalisation. What does not look credible is Mr Woolas's explanation on yesterday's show. It would appear to be factually wrong and doesn't stack up. He needs to explain why it was right -- or come up with another one. We'll be sending this note to him.'


Also PM on Thursday analysed the Gordon Brown/John Humphrys Today interview as well as the Phil Woolas one and decides that Gordon Brown was wrong, although if you include older workers then the percentage of net new jobs taken by foreign born workers is 'only' 72%. PM also take on Phil Woolas's football crowd claim and say that 'he is completely wrong'. So Phil Woolas will you come out and apologise for your 'misdirections'?