Immigration: Now it's the Foreign Secretary Who Get's His Facts Seriously Wrong


April 07, 2010

No sooner has the PM had his knuckles wrapped by the Statistics Authority for using misleading statistics on immigration, than his Foreign Secretary does the same on Radio 5 Live.

In an interview at 8.40 a.m. this morning on the Five Live Breakfast Show, David Miliband said:

"One point that is very often not understood is that half the people who came into the country last year, of 160,000, were British people returning to Britain ……..".

In fact he was referring to net immigration for 2008 which was 163,000 but none of them were British people returning home. In fact, twice as many Brits left as arrived that year so they made no contribution to net immigration. Of the total of 590,000 who arrived in 2008 only about 1 in 7 was British.

Commenting, Sir Andrew Green Chairman of Migrationwatch said, 'Yet again a very senior member of the Government has got his facts on immigration completely wrong. If Cabinet Ministers cannot get the basic facts right, how can they possibly have an effective immigration policy.’

NOTE TO EDITORS:
You can listen again at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0070htg

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