Watchdog: David Cameron Significantly Misrepresented Immigration Stats

Today, Watchdog has criticized David Cameron’s claim that the Government’s Immigration policy had decreased the trend of migrants taking the majority of job roles from British nationals. Watchdog stated that the Prime Minister ‘significantly misrepresented’ official statistics. The Daily Telegraph, who featured Cameron’s article has been ordered to publish a correction to highlight the inaccuracy of his claim. Last month, Andrew Dilnot the head of the UK Statistics Authority challenged the Prime Minister’s claim stating that his comments were baseless as no such statistics exist.

REC Chief Executive: Cameron’s Comments Unhelpful

Last month, David Cameron wrote a column for the Daily Telegraph claiming that UK natives were now filling the majority of job positions in the UK created in the last 12 months.

“Progress is being made: while most new jobs used to go to foreign workers, in the past year more than three-quarters have gone to British workers.”

Andrew Dilnot, UK Statistics Authority chair has slammed the claim, stating that no such statistic exists. 

“The official statistics provide estimates of net change in the number of people in employment. This is not the same as the number of people who move into employment,” he said. “From the available official statistics, it is, therefore, not possible to estimate the number of new jobs, nor the number of new jobs that are filled by UK nationals, nor the number of new jobs that are filled by non-UK nationals.”

Dilnot is not the only one that was unhappy with Cameron’s claim. The Chief Executive of Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) Kevin Green, has also commented that the claims have been ‘unhelpful’. He stated that recruitment agencies have to comply with legislation and codes of conduct. Therefore, Cameron’s aim to ban overseas-only recruiting is in fact illegal under the Equality Act.

PCC Orders Daily Telegraph to Publish Correction of PM’s Inaccurate Comments

The Press Complaints Commission (PCC), ordered the Daily Telegraph to publish a correction to clear up the inaccuracy of the Prime Minister’s claim. Watchdog has approved the following correction as ‘sufficient’:

Our item ‘We’re building an immigration system that puts Britain first‘ (July 29), stated that while most ‘new’ jobs used to go to foreign workers, in the past year more than three quarters have gone to British workers. We would like to make clear that the Office of National Statistics data on which this was based track net changes in employment, not ‘new’ jobs. The data show that British nationals account for more than three quarters of the growth in employment over this period.

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