Freedom from information
The BBC was very eager to nail the government on its supposed ‘misleading’ figures for death rates in the NHS at weekends [Not so keen to get to the real figures though] with a FOI request.
Strangely the BBC shows a marked reluctance to similarly nail the government when it comes to genuinely dodgy immigration figures that the government admits it won’t reveal because ‘ it might prejudice the outcome of the EU referendum. ‘ Yes we can’t have facts and information relevenat to the debate interfering with the debate.
Ministers ‘hiding full scale of EU immigration’
Experts say that while official migration figures suggest just one million EU nationals have come to Britain over past five years, more than two million have registered for national insurance numbers
Hundreds of thousands more EU migrants may have come to Britain than disclosed in official records, experts have warned as ministers were accused of hiding the full scale of immigration.
Official figures published suggested that 257,000 migrants came to Britain last year, with a significant rise in the number of Bulgarians and Romanians.
However over the same period 630,000 EU citizens registered for a national insurance number, which would entitle them to work or claim benefits in Britain.
Jonathan Portes, Principle Research Fellow at the National Institute of economic and social research, has asked the Government for more detail of the national insurance numbers.
However, his request has been rejected on the grounds that it might prejudice the outcome of the EU referendum.
He said: “It is very difficult to understand why there should be this sudden divergence. I do not believe that you can explain this huge discrepancy now by saying these are people only here for a few months then going back. It is massive and it did not used to be this big.
“The Government is hiding this data. They claim it would interfere with the renegotiation. It is genuinely outrageous. Which ever side of the argument you are, on immigration or on the EU, the electorate deserves to have the facts and the data.”
Source: http://biasedbbc.org/blog/2016/02/25/freedom-from-information/
