The House of Lords Economic Committee, which found that immigration has had little or no impact on the living standards of the existing population, has been accused of unfairly stressing the report’s negative outcomes over the positive.
“The message seems to be ‘accentuate the negative, eliminate the positive’ – leading to the conclusion that there are no benefits to be derived from the recent wave of immigration,” says David Coats, associate director of policy at The Work Foundation. “Yet they accept there is little evidence to support the case that immigration has had an adverse impact on employment.”
Lord Wakeman, chair of the inquiry, describes the Government’s use of GDP, as opposed to income per head, to measure the impact of immigration on the UK economy as “preposterous and irrelevant, because it does not reflect the economic wellbeing of the existing population”.
But the British Chamber of Commerce said that focusing on this argument means the report “ignores the contribution made by immigrant labour in plugging the skills gaps that blight our economy”.
The prime minister has also refuted the committee’s claims: “The idea that [immigrants’] skills have not had a positive impact on our economy is wrong,” says Gordon Brown. “Our GDP has continued to rise and our GDP per head has risen faster than all the major countries [in the G7].”
Elsewhere the report rejects the Government’s claims that immigration is needed to meet the skills demand, as well as its argument that immigration will help solve the country’s ageing population problem. Yet Brown says the Government is already taking action on many of the report’s recommendations through its existing policies.
