Economic 1.0

Guide to Economic Papers

Paper 1.1 (March 2005) is a general survey of the economic arguments for immigration. It examines their contribution to the Exchequer, impact on economic growth, the out flow of personal remittances and the effect on age structure and pensions. It also looks at the different circumstances in Scotland. It goes on to examine the costs of large scale immigration interms of housing and social implications. An Annex summarises international experience of the impact of immigration on economic growth. Studies in the United States, Canada and Holland show that it is minimal in all cases. Paper 1.3 contains a fuller summary of the Dutch results.

Paper 1.5 (January 2005) is a detailed rebuttal of the Government's two major claims at the time that immigrants makeup 8% of the population and contribute 10% to GDP and, secondly, that they contribute half a percent to economic growth.

Paper 1.6 (April 2005) demolishes government claims that immigration is needed to fill 600,000 vacancies.

Paper 1.8 (December 2005) gives details of a dialogue with the Home Office (via the House of Lords Economic Committee) in which the Home Office were unable to sustain their case.

Paper 1.10 (August 2006) is another look at the Government's claim that immigrants contribute 2.5 billion pounds per year to the Exchequer and the Institute for Public Policy Research’s(IPPR) later elaboration of that claim. The paper found that the Government's result can only be obtained if all children of mixed house holds a reattributed to the host community. If they are split 50/50, the net benefit to the Exchequer becomes a small loss of about £100 million a year.

Paper 1.11 (August 2006) finds that a worker has to earn £27,000 per year on average to make a positive contribution to the Exchequer over a lifetime. Only 20% of the working age migrant population are earning this amount. (A similar result applies to the UK born but the Government should be able to choose work related migrants).

Paper 1.12 (October 2006) finds that 95% of East European workers registered on the Workers Registration Scheme earn less than £8 per hour. At this level their contribution to GDP is probably slightly negative. Their tax and National Insurance contribution is just over half that of the UK employed contribution. So long as they are young healthy and single this need not matter but it is, of course, likely to change.

Paper 1.13 (November 2006) examines the government claim that migration has increased output by atleast £4 billion and account for 10-15% of trend growth. It illustrates that, even on these figures, the benefit to the host community is close to zero.

Paper 1.14 (November 2006) summarises the government's shifting arguments for large-scale immigration - 'The Seven Deadly Spins'.

4 November, 2006