How did the Tories reach the estimate at the heart of Labour’s ‘fake news’ migration fight?

Claim

Net migration could increase to 840,000 a year if Jeremy Corbyn is elected as prime minister.

Background

At the Labour party conference this year, delegates voted in support of a motion instructing the party to include in its manifesto a range of immigration-based pledges, including to “maintain and extend free movement rights”.

Tory pledge to cut immigration triggers Labour 'fake news' row Read more

The motion was composed by the Labour Campaign for Free Movement, a group formed of members and supporters. In response to a tweet sent on 25 September questioning the extent to which free movement would be expanded, the campaign’s Twitter account replied “beyond the EU”.

Based on this, the Conservative party published analysis of what it claimed net migration would look like under a Corbyn government and concluded “extending free movement to the rest of the world would result in average net immigration to the UK of 840,000 per year over the next 10 years”. Labour responded by calling the claim “fake news”.

Reality

The Labour party is not strictly bound by policy passed at its annual conference, but it is an indication of the direction the party might take in its manifesto.

The final policy pledges adopted in the manifesto will be determined at the party’s “clause V” meeting – only held once an election is called – and this is scheduled for Saturday 16 November. But putting aside the fact the Labour party has yet to make any manifesto pledges on immigration, the Conservative party analysis is problematic.

The projections for European Economic Area (EEA) migration are not based on official statistics recorded by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) but based on the government’s own immigration white paper produced in 2018. The projection in the white paper was presented as a range, and the Conservatives have chosen to use the uppermost estimate in the range, of about 80,000 a year. The range dips down to below 20,000 a year at the lower end of the estimate.

For projections of what net migration would look like if free movement were extended globally, the party is moving into hypothetical territory. The paper acknowledges there is a “wide range of potential drivers of immigration which are inherently uncertain”.

The party uses data on 10 European countries that have joined the EU since 2004 and applies a blanket growth rate to all countries outside the EEA to calculate its growth projections. This discounts a wide variety of factors that influence migration flows and overlooks the possibility that, at least in relation to some countries, net migration could decline, as it has done in some EU countries since 2016.

Verdict

The Conservative party analysis uses confused methodology to present a highly manipulated and selective picture.