Migration - the facts?

The government has prevented the publication of a cross-departmental report that found one impact of immigration is smaller than has been claimed.

It suggests "displacement" - the number of UK workers unemployed as a consequence of immigration - is well below the figure used by ministers of 23 for every 100 additional immigrants even though Department for Work and Pensions research at the time showed that the displacement impact of migration on low-skilled British jobs was mixed with only patchy evidence.

The work, an extension of Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), a group of independent academics,  research, estimates that the cost to existing British workers of new arrivals is much lower. The prime minister's office has prevented publication of the report, which has been ready since last year. Research finding that immigration is easier to absorb than previously thought is politically unhelpful. In fact, the latest labour market statistics published show that 87% or 367,000 of the 425,000 new jobs in the UK economy in the past year went to British workers. Only 54,000 of the extra jobs in the economy, or 13%, went to foreign nationals.

Meanwhile,  EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Cecilia Malmstrom, Sweden's former Europe minister, insisted that there was no "concrete" evidence of so-called benefit tourism in the UK.

"You have a generous benefit system but so do many other countries so I don't know why this debate is so intense in the UK," she said. "But I've also failed to get any concrete evidence that there is a massive abuse of benefits. We've asked for that evidence but we've not received that evidence, that there's a massive abuse of benefits." She added " ...Just because there is a growth in racist parties saying we should close our borders.