Civitas Blog

Michael Howard has sparked a calm and measured debate about immigration that is long overdue. For too long, false accusations of racism have intimidated many people into remaining silent. Of course, Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the CRE, did his best to fan the flames in the Guardian, where he is quoted as saying: "It appears that Mr Howard has, against his own better instincts, and for purely political reasons, surrendered to the provisional wing of his party to base this campaign, not on measured and rational debate, but on the ill-informed propaganda of some of the more demented anti-immigration groups."

The Government opted not to play the race card. Hazel Blears, the Home Office minister, claimed that the opposition would be unable to afford a new system because of its planned £35bn spending cuts. "Everybody agrees with controlled migration," she said. "That requires investment in both effective border controls and immigration systems. Michael Howard's words and the Tories' spending plans are at odds."

Even if ‘everybody’ does agree that a change of policy is needed, there is still no consensus about some of the fundamental facts. For instance, what have been the economic consequences of immigration? One Home Office report estimated that in the fiscal year 1999/2000 Britain’s 5 million migrants paid in aggregate £2.5 billion more in taxes than they received in government expenditure. However, Professor Bob Rowthorn (among others) has challenged these estimates on the Civitas website. He shows how some unusual factors led the researchers to exaggerate the benefit by about £2.1 billion and how many costs were left out of their calculations.