According to Ed Balls, the last Government “brushed immigration under the carpet”, failing to acknowledge that it was an issue that worried Labour supporters.

When the then Prime Minister did address the issue during the election campaign, he claimed that the points-based system his government had introduced was reducing the numbers coming to the UK from outside the European Community.

Speaking on March 31, Gordon Brown made various claims, some based on published statistics, some not. The burden of his argument was that the system “gives us the ability to secure the skills we need and to secure our borders against those who are not welcome here”.

Specifically, under Tier 2 of the points-based system (skilled workers) he said that “the 30,000 who employers hire from abroad come here only after the jobs have been advertised locally in jobcentre plus for four weeks.” After a complaint from Migrationwatch UK to the UK Statistics Authority, the Home Office has admitted it simply doesn’t know where this figure originated.

Mr Brown also said that other numbers in Tier 2 were falling, from 99,000 in 2007 to 81,000 in 2008, and 63,000 in 2009 (these figures include both applicants granted visas and their dependents.) The UKSA confirmed that these figures are correct. They can be found here, in Table 1 of Control of Immigration: Quarterly Statistical Summary, United Kingdom, October-December 2009.

Whether this trend will continue is not clear. More recent data covering the first quarter of 2010 shows a rise in numbers compared to the equivalent quarter of 2009 – 16,915 against 15,925 – but it is still a good deal lower than the first quarter of 2007 (30,065) or 2008 (20,050).

Mr Brown also quoted an estimate of the number of students entering via Tier 4, which he said would be lower by 40,000 in 2010-11 than would otherwise have been the case. The Home Office says that this is an estimate made by the UK Border Agency from management information and is not drawn from official statistics.  

Even if this estimate is right, it is an odd way of presenting the data. The ONS statistics show that student numbers in fact rose sharply between 2008 and 2009, from 208,800 to 273,445, a rise of 31 per cent. To argue that they will be 40,000 lower in 2010-11 than they would have been may be true, but cannot be checked and is misleading when quoted without any reference to the recent trend.

The UKSA has said in the past that there are circumstances where data held for management purposes, as in this case, should be treated as official statistics: when they are used publicly in support of major policy decisions, or when they attract public controversy when published. Both of these conditions were satisfied in this case, said Sir Michael Scholar, Chair of UKSA, in reply to a letter from Sir Andrew Green of Migrationwatch, who had complained that Mr Brown had used data not available to others. This exchange of letters can be read here.

The UKSA found for Migrationwatch in this case and on 30 April Sir Michael wrote to Sir David Normington, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, saying that in future it would be helpful if the Home Office published the statistics in as accessible way as possible. “We would like to see this done as quickly as technical and professional considerations allow”, he said.

So far, the Home Office has not responded. It hasn’t said it will do as requested, and it hasn’t said it won’t. There has, of course, been a change of government so, being charitable, we might say that the Home Office is waiting for detailed policy to emerge.

The new coalition government said in its agreed programme when it took office that it would introduce an annual limit on non-EU migrants. Whether it will do that within the existing points-based system or in some other way has not been made clear.

By far the most chaotic part of the system relates to the admission of students, where the decision lies with some 2,000 colleges licensed by the Government to issue letters of acceptance for student visas. It is in their financial interest to do so, so they face a conflict of interest. The system is also riddled with corruption. The Times reported  that one college which had admitted 1.797 students had only three classrooms and three teachers. Another college claimed to have 150 students but enrolled 1,178 and offered places to a further 1,575.

Mr Brown in his March 31 speech said that in the last year 140 colleges had been stopped from bringing in students, and that the rules on how many hours students on lower-level courses can work had been tightened. It is presumably by working out how many these 140 would otherwise have admitted that the Border Agency reached the figure of 40,000 fewer students coming in 2010-11 than would otherwise have been the case, but incredible that Mr Brown felt able to claim credit for closing a loophole that was of the Government’s own devising.

As Keith Vaz, Chairman of the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee in the last Parliament put it: “Bogus colleges may have allowed tens of thousands of foreign nationals to enter the country illegally. The Government has been aware of their existence for ten years and done nothing to stop them. This is totally unacceptable and frankly, quite unbelievable.”

There is clearly plenty of work for the new government in sorting out the system. However they choose to do it, the UKSA will be watching closely to ensure the Home Office produces regular, clear and comprehensible statistics so we can at least understand better what is going on.