“MORE than three million immigrants came to Britain under Labour - a rate of one a minute,” The Sun 22 February 2011



“How three million migrants came to UK under Labour in biggest population growth since Saxon times (... that's nearly one every minute)” Daily Mail headline, 22 February 2011.



“LABOUR allowed 3.2million migrants into Britain at the rate of one a minute, claims a report,” Daily Star 22 February 2011



A number of newspapers today make the mathematically unsound claim that if 3.2 million immigrants arrived in the UK this amounted to one per minute.



Already on the Full Fact blog we pointed out for this to be the rate there would need to be more than 6.8 million migrants coming in.



So just how did the press get their numbers – and headlines – in such a muddle?



The figures are taken from a report by MigrationWatch, which in turn bases its estimates on official figures for migration.



The report makes the claim that “Under Labour 3.2 million foreign citizens arrived in Britain.”



What this means, as the press release explains more accurately is that net migration- ie the balance of inflows and outflows - of non-British citizens between 1997 and 2010 is 3.2 million.



The report also states: “Foreign immigrants continue to arrive at almost one per minute.”



While these two statements appear to be talking about the same set of people, they are not - a point missed by a number of papers this morning.



As the data in this table shows, adding up the balance of non-British migration between 1997 and 2009 gives a figure of 3.17 million. Even though the 2010 figures are not out until Thursday it seems clear that the number will move beyond the 3.2 million mark.



But this figure deals with net foreign migration. The one a minute rate applies to gross inward migration for all citizens – including UK nationals.



The graph below, produced by the Office for National Statistics shows that inward migration has been above the 500,000 mark for most of the last decade.







With a rate of 525,600 people coming to the UK required to average one per minute (or 527,040 in leap years), This shows where this claim has come from.



Total inflows for all nationalities to the UK between 1997 and 2009 was 6.6 million over 12 years - averaging 553,500 people arriving each year. Net migration for all nationalities 1997-2009 was just over 2.2 million.



In fairness, two of the papers using the one a minute claim, the Telegraph and Express, do attempt to explain it.



The Telegraph still falls short by looking at the inward migration figure of 5.5 million non-UK nationals in thirteen years – which is still not one a minute.



The Express explains it as being the figure inward migration for 2009, a more well-grounded justification for the claim.



In some cases, such as the Daily Mail, the text of the report does not claim that three million equals a migrant a minute – suggesting the headline was the work of a sub-editor.



This is not the case for The Sun, in which the first line reads: “MORE than three million immigrants came to Britain under Labour - a rate of one a minute.”



This mis-reporting is not due to the inaccuracy of the figures but a failure to understand them.



Conclusion



So the figures themselves are not inaccurate, the slip up in the reporting does raise questions about the willingness of reporters (or sub-editors) to actually engage with the figures they cover.



By conflating inward migration for all nationalities with net migration for foreign nationals a muddled picture emerges.



Of course, there are understandable time constraints when turning round the stories, but checking, like the arrival of an extra migrant to the UK, only takes a minute.