“The balance of migration between European countries and the UK is broadly in balance. The excess in migration is all coming from outside the EU.” David Cameron, Prime Minister's Questions, 24 November 2010.



Background



Full Fact has already looked at some of the inaccuracies around claims regarding the proportion of migration to the UK accounted for by citizens of the EU.



But far from accounting for 80 per cent of immigration, does EU net migration add very little to the UK population, as the Prime Minister appeared to suggest this afternoon?



Such a scenario would have important implications for the perceptions of which elements of inward migration that cannot be restricted by out domestic Government.



Analysis



The Prime Minister's claim is broadly true. We clarified with the Home Office that the figures used by Mr Cameron included net migration of UK and EU citizens, rather than simply non-UK EU citizens as could be mistakenly inferred from the PM's comments. It is therefore an analysis of the change in population numbers rather demographics.



The graph opposite, based on the provisional figures for 2009, show that the net immigration of non-UK EU citizens was 43,000, whereas there was net emigration of UK citizens of 36,000.*



With hundreds of thousands of people moving to and from the UK each year a gap of 7,000 seems close enough to balancing - especially when compared with net immigration of 184,000 for non-EU citizens.



There is another way of considering migration between the UK and EU countries – after all UK and EU citizens do not have to simply move between the UK and other EU countries.



The Office for National Statistics publishes data on the previous and next country of residence for people entering and leaving the UK. The most up to date figures we were able to obtain are still  for 2008.



These show that 12,000 more people came into the UK from the EU than vice versa. Not in balance, but again relatively small compared with other countries and in the context of 528,000 people arriving and 393,000 leaving the UK that year.



Conclusion



Broadly speaking the Prime Minister's claim checks out. While one could quibble that citizenship isn't the same as movement between these countries, even the data for movement between EU countries and the UK shows a relatively small gap.



Leaving aside UK citizens leaving the country, the EU still contributes a smaller amount of net migration than the rest of the world, at 43,000 against 184,000.



All of these figure are however simply based on provisional information from the International Passenger Survey (IPS).



Tomorrow, the Office for National Statistics publishes its annual Long Term International Migration figures which, while heavily based on the IPS, take into account other sources of information.



While the comparison of the two sets of numbers in this recent bulletin show no huge divergence, we will check to see if tomorrow's data still supports the claim. 



*(Update: The new figures show that the balance for 2009 was 44,000 UK citizens emigrating, with 58,000 citizens of other EU states arriving - putting the gap at 14,000 on citizenship.)

 



Patrick Casey