A disgrace

The Express' front page for Thursday:


More on this once the story gets posted in the morning. But the use of the word 'rob' is clearly hugely problematic and exceptionally inflammatory.

For now, a reminder of what the PCC's guidance note on reporting on immigration says:

Similarly, the Commission – in previous adjudications under Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Code – has underlined the danger that inaccurate, misleading or distorted reporting may generate an atmosphere of fear and hostility that is not borne out by the facts.

UPDATE: Inevitably, the Express' article (and editorial) was based on (copied and pasted from) a Migrationwatch briefing paper. Sarah Mulley has explained 'Why Migrationwatch is wrong' in a blogpost for New Statesman.

Scaremongering about immigrants and jobs

Only a couple of days into the General Election campaign and a sign of things to come from the Express and the Mail:


It was unsurprising to see this story appearing on the BNP website soon after, the only party likely to benefit from such misleading and inflammatory coverage.

There have been some excellent posts already about today's reporting - see Claude at Hagley Road to Ladywood, Five Chinese Crackers, Nicola Smith and Richard Exell from the TUC at Left Foot Forward, Anton at Enemies of Reason and Full Fact - so this will just pick up some of the most important points.

1. The Left Foot Forward article makes clear that the Spectator, who originally produced the figures:

- Conflates 'non-UK born' with 'nationality' – there are many (around 1,432,000) non-UK born British nationals, excluding them from the analysis is to exclude five per cent of the UK labour force.

- Excludes UK workers over state pension age – a method that excludes 1,419,000 workers. There is no good reason for omitting this group – they are included in ONS’s widely reported analysis of total employment levels in the UK and comprise around five per cent of the workforce.

- Excludes public sector jobs – meaning that around 20 per cent of the jobs (public sector jobs excluding those in financial corporations) in the entire UK economy are discounted.

The Mail and Express have ignored these caveats completely.

2. The Mail claimed 'foreigners' (a word it seems to use with such utter contempt) had taken 98.5% of these jobs. The Express said it was 92%. The Spectator said it was 99%. Previously, the Mail had said it was 70%, while the Express has said 85% and 'all' new jobs had gone to migrants and it wasn't accurate then either.

The post at Left Foot Forward shows the actual figure may be closer to 50%.

As one of the authors points out:

if you include employed men aged 65+ and employed women aged 60+ then the proportions fall to 72.4 per cent. If you include people who were not born here but who are UK citizens the percentage falls again.

In the latest of many updates, the Spectator's Fraser Nelson has agreed with the above analysis.

3. The Mail uses 'foreigners' on its front page instead of 'foreign-born'. So even if an immigrant has become a British citizen, they are still considered - by the Mail - a 'foreigner'. Indeed, even those born to British parents abroad would be classed as 'foreigners'.

From Full Fact:

The figures for 2009 show that while 3.7 million jobs were held by non-UK born workers, only 2.3 million jobs were held by non-British citizens.

From this we can deduce that almost 40 per cent of those listed as 'foreign born' in the Spectator tables and described by the Mail as 'immigrants' are in possession of a British passport.

4. In total, the figures show 'British-born' people had 23.96m of the total 27.49m jobs - which is 87%.

Since 1997, employment among UK-born and UK residents has risen. The employment rate for people born in the UK is the same as 1997, for UK citizens it has decreased by 0.1%. This is hardly a 'betrayal' of British workers, as the Mail's front page claims.

5. In attempting to back up his claims that '99%' of new jobs had been accounted for by immigration, Fraser Nelson points to a 2007 document from the Statistics Commission which he says is 'helpful'.

Indeed it is, because it says:

The actual proportion of the employment increase accounted for by foreigners/migrants ranges from just over 50% when looking at foreign nationals and the 16+ age group to just over 80% when looking at country of birth and excluding workers who are over state pension age.

So not 99%? Or 98.5%? Or 92%? Even allowing for the fact that that document is just over a year old, there's no way it's changed that much in that time.

That same document also points out the vast differences between 'foreign-born' and 'foreign nationals':

over one third of those born abroad and in UK employment in 2007 were UK nationals rather than foreign nationals.

The Mail has tried this before, when it refused to consider second or third generation immigrants - who were born in Britain and lived here their whole life - as British.

So when the Mail refers to 'foreign workers' and the Express to 'overseas workers', it's a deliberately misleading description.

Nelson says:

My point here is not that nasty immigrants have taken all our jobs.

Unfortunately, using his figures, that is exactly the point the Mail and Express have tried to make.

And there will no doubt be much more of that to come in the run up to polling day.

Mailwatch exposes not-at-all-special Mail investigation

Over at Mailwatch, Jamie Sport has done another excellent article ripping apart a dreadful 'special investigation' by Sue Reid - their go-to reporter for in-depth (ahem) immigration articles.

The latest is firmly in the 'jobs scare' category, trying to pretend that there is a big problem with migrants taking jobs from British workers. Except the two sets of numbers she is using can't possibly compared in a sensible way, as Jamie proves.

And even in the way she has presented the figures, they show the situation isn't half as bad as the Mail wants it to be. They have put the figures in a little table, showing each area of the country - but of the 33 towns they give figures for, only 8 of them show more migrant workers than British ones.

Three of those eight are in London, but in the text Reid admits the figures for London as a whole are in the Brits' favour.

But that is all only relevant if you accept the pointless statistical analysis that the article indulges in.

But it shouldn't be accepted. Because it is, clearly, bollocks.

It's worth adding that on two occasions Reid does admit something that the Mail quite possibly has never admitted before:

While a NINO can be used to access social benefits, most newcomers from abroad are not eligible for these payouts and use the number only to seek work.

And:

A claimant is a person on job-seekers' allowance who is actively trying to find employment. Newly arrived foreigners cannot get this payout.

Hmm. I wonder how often they will repeat these statements? Hopefully more often than they have so far.

More jobs for British workers, according to the Mail

5CC has posted on the latest foreign worker scare story, written by James Slack in the Mail. As he points out, this is a old favourite dragged out by the tabloids at regular intervals (although the figure has dropped from all jobs, to 85% to now 70%), and which he has proved to be rubbish on countless occasions.

But there are a couple of points I would like to add. First, the Mail's story British jobs for foreign workers: Experts reveal 70% of new jobs taken by migrants is based on OECD's International Migration Outlook 2009. The press release to accompany the report has the title: Keep doors open to migrant workers to meet long-term labour needs, says OECD. This recommendation doesn't appear anywhere in Slack's article. Nor does their statement that: 'In the United Kingdom and Ireland migration from the new EU member countries has declined by more than half'. How did he forget to mention those points?

Secondly, this story appeared on 1 July. But the Mail had done very brief article on foreign-born workers only a couple of days before, on 29 June. Headlined 'UK jobs going to foreign workers' it was inspired by (ahem) Balanced Migration, the Mail's second favourite migration organisation.

Here's the first line of the story:

The vast majority of private sector jobs created under Labour have been taken by workers born abroad, offical figures show.

At which point you wonder - since when did the 'foreign worker' story get split between public and private sector?

And the answer: when the private sector figures says what you want better than the total figures.

The Balanced Migration press release is: All private sector jobs created under Labour have gone to foreign workers: “British jobs for foreign workers” - the last part of that appearing in the headline of the Mail's 1 July story (churnalism, much?). Notice how it is 'all private sector jobs' - which becomes 'nearly all' later in the piece.

But even that is a distortion to get the right story - it turns out it's actually only private sector jobs of people under retirement age.

The 'research note' admits:

The picture looks slightly different in respect of all working people over the age of 16 because a significant number of UK born people have stayed on after the official retirement age. These figures show that 1.1 million new jobs have been created in the public sector of which 28% went to non-UK born workers. In the private sector there were 1.8 million new jobs but 85% went to non-UK born workers.

So even if you accept this stupid numbers game (and 5cc shows you shouldn't - extra people in employment is not 'new jobs', foreign might not mean foreign and there are 'almost 4 million immigrants are in work in the UK, compared to almost 26 million UK born people'), Balanced Migration have put an inflammatory headline on a statement that clearly isn't supported by the facts. 85% is not 'all'.

But why this split between the public and private sectors anyway? Simple: the overall figure for all jobs would be much lower than 'all' or even 85% - it works out about 63%/37% based on these figures. Figures which, they admit, 'are estimates based on survey respondents’ views about the organisation for which they work'.

Then again, if Balanced Migration must split it, why not say '72% of public sector jobs gone to British born workers'?

So that was the flawed paper on which the Mail's 29 June story was based. Except, it didn't quite get the figures right because it mixed up the totals for the private and public sectors (even Mail people who agree can't get to grips with Balanced Migration's weird breakdown)

So the Mail claimed:
15% of 1.1 million private sector jobs went to British born people, and
72% of 1.8 million public sector jobs (which it mentioned only in the last paragraph).

Whereas Balanced Migration claimed:
15% of 1.8 million private sector jobs went to British born people, and
72% of 1.1 million public sector jobs.

So when the Mail journos aren't copying and pasting, they're getting it wrong. Does it matter? Well, ironically, yes. Because going on the Mail's statistics, they show that of the 2.9 million 'new jobs', 1,461,000 went to British born people (50.4%), and 1,439,000 to foreign born (49.6%).

Oops. No wonder they wanted Slack to get back on track two days later with a '70% of jobs go to foreigners' story.