“TAXPAYERS shell out £1million a week to fund appeals by relatives of immigrants barred from Britain, a report reveals today.”

Daily Express, 13 December 2011

“Free visit visa costs UK £52m... Appeals rocket after Labour fee axe"

The Sun, 13 December 2011

[Also in Daily Telegraph, Daily Star and Daily Mail]

Several newspapers ran stories this morning claiming that appeals made by migrants who are refused entry to the UK to visit relatives cost the taxpayer £1 million a week, or around £50 million a year.

The papers go on to point out that in 2002 the then Labour government removed all fees for migrants wishing to appeal on the basis of having relatives in the UK – fees that were previously as high as £500 for an oral appeal hearing.

Since 2002, the number of appeals was purported to have increased sixfold from around 8,000 to around 50,000 last year.

Full Fact decided to check the figures.

Analysis

The source of the statistics are from research by Migration Watch UK in which they analysed data from the Home Office and Justice Department regarding the number and cost of appeals made by unsuccessful family visa applicants.

The organisation derived their headline figure using two key sources. The first regards the expected cost of a single appeal; the second determines how many such appeals were made.

Costing

The costs were claculated using information provided in a parliamentary answer on 20 January 2011, in which Frank Field MP asked the Immigration Minister to provide details of costs and quantities of appeals. 

The answer expalined that the costs of family visa appeals were divided between the Home Office's UK Border Agency (UKBA) and the Justice Department's Tribunals Service.

The UKBA's estimated costs ranged from £200 to £500 per appeal, suggesting an average cost of £350. However, the answer makes clear that family visit visa appeals fall "towards the lower end of this estimate", indicating the relevant figure could be lower than this average.

Meanwhile, the Tribunals Service's costs were £504 for a family visit visa appeal, rising to £577 for appeals against other entry clearance decisions.

Migration Watch placed the overall cost at £927 per appeal, derived from adding together the £350 average UKBA cost and the £577 cost for the Tribunals Service.

This raised some confusion, since £504 appeared to be the relevant figure for referring to family visa appeals, and would potentially yield a total cost figure several million less than reported in the headlines.

Full Fact contacted Migration Watch to check their choice of costing figures and will hopefully clarify this point in due course.

Applicants

It its briefing paper, Migration Watch provided figures for the number of family visitor appeals made in each year since 2000. These appeared to back up the claim that numbers had increased by a factor of six since costs were removed in 2002, from 7,997 to around 50,000.

A key caveat, acknowledged by the organisation, was that the 50,000 figure for 2010 (the most recent year for which statistics were in part available) was based on an extrapolation. The solid figures showed 37,657 appeals made up to September 2010.

The figures, graphed below, were backed up by parliamentary answers from 2005 and 2011:

One aspect of the data not covered by the newspaper reports is that the number of appeals has been falling since 2007, while the number of successful appeals has nevertheless been steadily rising. 

However, the figures from 2000 to 2003 were based on data seemingly unavailable to the Immigration Minister in the 2011 answer, Damian Green. Full Fact contacted both the Home Office and the Justice Department to investigate where the original data was recorded to cover this grey area.

After some investigation, the departments revealed that the data had only been made available in Freedom of Information (FOI) requests. Furthermore, the fruits of these requests had not been made publicly available.

In light of Full Fact's requests, the Home Office indicated they would be publishing the FOI data on their website, which we look forward to seeing in the public domain.

Conclusion

Examination of the figures provided in the parliamentary answers suggests that Migration Watch's figures seem to be accurate.

By taking £927 to be the average cost of an appeal and 50,000 as the expected number of appeals in 2010, Migration Watch's figures suggest a total cost of £46,350,000, or £891,346 per week. Hence, the latter seems to be rounded to £1 million for 2010. For 2009, the equivalent costs are £49,965,300 for the year and £960,871 a week.

The Sun's headline figure of £52 million thus creates the most confusion. It is higher than both the 2010 figure of £46 million and the 2009 figure of £50 million, and indicates it has been derived from the £1 million a week statistic that is itself rounded up.

We will await clarification from Migration Watch on some details of the costs involved and update when that is provided.

UPDATE (14/12/2011)

We have heard back from Migration Watch UK, who have confirmed that an arithmetical error led to the use of £577 as the cost of the Tribunals Service. The correct figure was indeed £504, and hence the estimated cost per appeal is £854 rather than £927 per application.

The organisation explained however that this did not affect the main point of their research:

"Fortunately it does not affect the thrust of the paper, nor its five policy recommendations.  Taking the mid point of the UKBA costs gives a cost of £854 per case rather than the £927 mentioned in the text.  In 2009 the total cost on this basis would have been £46m.  The press release refers to "some £50m a year" clearly implying that the figure was not precise; rounding 46 would, of course bring it to 50.  Given the very wide range of cost estimates, this is a relatively small difference"

The projected cost for 2010 would therefore be £42.7 million, the equivalent of £821,154 per week. This does make it harder to round to a weekly cost of £1 million per year, although we should stress that these figures are still provisional.

The problem for the Sun is that they seem to be referring to these figures when they claim that "Last year 50,000 appeals were lodged — compared with just 8,000 before Labour axed the payments in 2002. And it has left taxpayers picking up a £52million bill." It appears upon closer inspection that the figure could be nearly £10 million lower than the paper claims.