Last night the three main party home affairs spokesmen clashed on Channel 4 News, after an exclusive investigation revealed an NHS contractor may have employed up to 1,000 illegal immigrants.
As the politicians traded claims and counter-claims, you’d be forgiven for thinking each talking about a completely different system. FactCheck unpicks three of the competing claims from the on-air row over illegal workers.
The claims
“Last year there were 64,000 removals from this country.”
Phil Woolas, immigration minister, Channel 4 News, 14 April 2010
“Half of the people who were deported were not actually deported – they were simply turned away at the border.”
Chris Huhne, Lib Dem home affairs spokesperson, Channel 4 News, 14 April 2010
In defending the system of dealing with illegal workers, Immigration Minister Phil Woolas called as evidence the high number of people who had been ejected from the UK last year.
Chris Huhne, however, accused him of spinning the stats – half of them hadn’t even made it into the country, let alone had the chance to work illegally.
Over to the Home Office’s control of immigration statistics. These include people who try to get into the country illegally, overstay or breach the conditions of their visa, are refused asylum, or go through deportation proceedings.
The headline figure for 2009 is that 64,750 “persons were removed or departed voluntarily from the UK”.
So there’s the number Woolas quotes. But when we check the breakdown, 29,060 of the 64,750 were initially refused entry at port. That’s 45 per cent of the total – very close to the half that Huhne pointed out didn’t even get into the country in the first place.
“Two years ago the government discovered there were more than two-and-a-half thousand illegal workers working in the security industry – one of them was even guarding the prime minister’s car. A few months ago I asked ministers how many of those people had been deported – the answer was 35.”
Chris Grayling, Conservative shadow home secretary, Channel 4 News, 14 April 2010
It was a scandal that broke early in Gordon Brown’s premiership – the discovery that thousands of illegal workers had been cleared by the body set up to licence the private security industry.
In November 2007, it emerged that 5,000 people without the right to work in the UK had been cleared by the Security Industry Authority, including 12 people contracted by the Met Police, one who guarded a site where cars were repaired.
A month later, then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith told parliament that, after an investigation, 6,600 security staff didn’t have the right to work in the UK; a question mark hung over a further 4,400. The NAO later reported that more than 3,000 of these had the right to work her – leaving 7,729 who didn’t, and had had their licences revoked.
So if anything, Grayling’s 2,500 is an underestimate. In February 2009, the Conservatives asked how many of the 3,275 cases where people had given a false name or national insurance number had resulted in a deportation.
Woolas told parliament that “at least 35” had been removed. He also believed “many more individuals” would have left the country voluntarily because new fines are introduced – but didn’t give a figure. So although this information was released a good few months earlier than Grayling suggested last night, the shadow home secretary seems to be on solid ground.
However, Woolas later accused Grayling of misrepresenting the facts about the security workers. We asked Labour why Grayling’s statement didn’t stack up; if we get any more information we’ll update this.
The verdict
Woolas cites a headline “removals” figure of 64,000 – but as Huhne pointed out, this is not the same as deportations.
Nearly half of the people included in this total were rejected at the border – perhaps not what the average viewer has in mind when the figure comes up in the context of a discussion about illegal workers being caught and sent home.
Chris Grayling’s claim is an underestimate of the extent of an illegal worker scandal that dogged the government in 2007 – although in the heat of the debate he suggests a figure released a few months after the scandal was released a few months ago.
