𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Labour’s immigration farce intensified after a minister admitted the Home Office does not know how many people are in the country.

Officials have conceded there are alarming gaps in data, prompting warnings of crime and increased pressure on social services which are not being funded properly.

And immigration minister Mike Tapp told an inquiry that border chiefs “often do not know who has left the country”.

This has prompted fears migrants are vanishing in the UK after overstaying their visas. And Reform UK claimed it was part of “the deliberate, wilful negligence of a political class that has never had any intention of controlling immigration.”

Mr Tapp told a House of Lords inquiry: “One of the frustrations in the Home Office and, I am sure, in other departments, concerns the quality of the data that we hold.

“That is an inheritance we are working hard behind the scenes to fix. The digitisation of our border, with e-visas, Electronic Travel Authorisations and the future digitisation that we are bringing in, will help with this.

“I will not go into the exact methods at which we are looking at the moment, because there are still a lot of decisions to be made, but I certainly recognise the challenges that we face in not having as much quality data as we would wish to have.”

Baroness Bertin, who sits on the Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee then asked: “This is a very direct question: do you, as the Home Office and the Minister, know how many people are in the country at any given time and who they are?“

Mr Tapp responded: “This is one of the issues. We do not. There are gaps in our data there, which we are working hard to fix.

“One of the issues that we have is that we often do not know who has left over the past decade or so. It is really difficult to quantify, but I assure you that we are working on that.”

Former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Hogan-Howe, who sits on the committee, hit out, declaring: “We have heard evidence from ex-Home Office people who pointed out that there is a gap in data, but, really, there is a gap in the strategy that asks for that data.

“There is no exit check because no one asked for it. What I have not heard clearly yet is whether this Government have that expectation, because, without it, they will never collect the data.

“The consequences are profound: criminality and other things but, mainly, pressure on social services.

“Is there clarity in government that we want data on who is leaving and who is entering?

“I take your colleague’s point that some of it is hard to obtain, but a lot of it is not. The symptoms of this problem are all over.”

Responding to the comments, Reform’s Home Affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf said: “The minister responsible for our borders has openly admitted that he has no idea how many people are in our country.

“It is important to understand that this is not simply incompetence. This is the deliberate, wilful negligence of a political class that has never had any intention of controlling immigration.

“For years, Labour and the Conservatives have made endless promises on illegal migration, yet failed at every turn. Reform will restore exit checks. We will know who comes in and who leaves. We will secure our border and deport all those illegally. This is the absolute bare minimum expected from a functioning government.”

Karl Williams, Research Director at the Centre for Policy Studies, has warned the Office for National Statistics has repeatedly revised its net migration numbers because the data gurus regularly overestimate emigration levels amongst non-EU migrants.

He claimed the ONS has also assumed non-EU nationals have left the country when their visas expired – despite there being no official record of them doing so.

Mr Williams told the Daily Express: “Sadly what ministers have recently confirmed – that government has no idea how many people are actually in Britain today, or who they are – is not new.

“The Centre Policy Studies has been sounding the alarm on the dire state of migration data for several years, not least in our 2024 report co-authored by Robert Jenrick and Neil O’Brien which looked at the full extent of the migration “data desert”.

“Accurate population and migration data is not just important for public confidence. Without it, policymakers cannot estimate future tax revenues, plan public spending levels, or calculate how many homes, GP surgeries or school places Britain needs.

“The need to get a grip on the basic numbers is made all the more urgent by the record migration levels of recent years, with around 1 in every 25 people living in the country today having arrived in just the four years from 2021 to 2024.”

Some 1,235,254 people moved to the UK in the 12 months to June 2024 while 496,536 emigrated, the ONS believes.

This accounted for 98% of the UK’s overall increase in population across this period.

The ONS revealed the population grew by 755,254 in the year to June 2024, the second-highest year on record. The previous record was set a year before – 890,049.

Current estimates suggest almost 70 million people live in the UK. And statisticians will update the figures for 2025 this Summer.

The ONS is overhauling how it estimates the number of people emigrating, moving away from the International Passenger Survey to the Department for Work and Pension’s (DWP)’s Registration and Population Interaction Database.

Net migration surged to a record high of 944,000 in the year ending March 2023. It had hit 764,000 in the previous 12 months.

The ONS has previously predicted the population will surge to 72.5 million by 2032, heaping more pressure on the NHS, housing, roads and schools.

Almost ten million people are expected to move to the UK between 2022 and 2032, with five million anticipated to leave over the same period.