A few years ago, a conspiracy theory was born, based on the idea that the population of Britain was far larger than the government claimed. This was known to be true because receipts from Tesco, the country\u2019s largest supermarket, gave an indication of how many people were buying everyday necessities, and these sales were too high to be explained by the official figures.<\/p>\n
This supermarket conspiracy of Tesco truthers was mostly covered as entertainment, and\u00a0Buzzfeed\u00a0even\u00a0did a de-bunking<\/a>, lamenting \u2018Rather than trusting the official stats which place the UK population at 64 million, this band of Ukip-ers, conspiracy theorists, and other assorted migration obsessives are adamant that you can really tell the UK population from the amount of food bought \u2013 and the amount of sewage which goes out the other end.\u2019<\/p>\n Britain is\u00a0a surveillance state<\/a>, but one where the authorities are clueless about who comes in and out, and where they end up<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Twenty million extra people clearly sounds implausible but, as with many conspiracy theories, there is a hard version and a soft version, and the idea that the real population is much higher than stated is not only plausible, but likely \u2013 and with significant consequences for most public services.<\/p>\n When Britain broke with the EU after the 2016 vote, one of the most pressing issues that arose was the status of the three million EU citizens living here without settled status. A pressure group,\u00a0the3million<\/a>, was set up, presumably choosing the figure to show how many people\u2019s lives would be turned upside down.<\/p>\n Except that there weren\u2019t three million unsettled EU citizens here \u2013 the figure was actually 5.7 million, of whom 3.8 million now have settled status and another 1.9 million are in the process. It\u2019s welcome news that, for most at least, the hassle and drama is over, yet it does pose the worrying question: how could the government\u2019s population estimate be out by literally millions of people?<\/p>\n Then, during the vaccine roll-out, the\u00a0National Immunisation Management System (NIMS)<\/a>\u00a0estimated that the adult population of\u00a0England was 49.7 million, rather than<\/a>\u00a0the Office for National Statistics (ONS) figure of 44.5 million. It\u2019s hard to exactly know which figure is more accurate, because younger people tend to be quite mobile, less likely to be vaccinated, and unlikely to suffer hospitalisation from Covid, but the variation is huge at any rate.<\/p>\n More recently, NHS records found\u00a0there to be 63 million<\/a>\u00a0registered GP patients in England as of September 2024. Yet the population of England was 56 million in the 2021 census, and only 57 million in 2022,\u00a0according to the Office for National Statistics.<\/a>\u00a0Even if you factor in net migration since then \u2013 764,000 in 2022 and 685,000 in 2023 for the whole of the UK \u2013 that doesn\u2019t add up.\u00a0<\/p>\n With GPs dealing with six million more patients than there are people,\u00a0fraud is suspected,<\/a>\u00a0since doctors may be claiming extra money for non-existent patients. However, a formal investigation by the NHS fraud regulator was abandoned during Covid, as there were obviously more pressing issues, so we don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n It could be fraud, but perhaps not. This week, for example, it was\u00a0revealed that more one in a hundred people<\/a>\u00a0in Britain is an illegal immigrant, a higher proportion than in any European other country, with an estimated 745,000 living here illegally.<\/p>\n Illegal migrants do not have to declare their status\u00a0while registering with GPs<\/a>, although the\u00a0government encourages foreign nationals<\/a>\u00a0to do so, so that they might be charged. Although I would rather that all non-citizens be required to take out health insurance while resident here, I agree that healthcare professionals should not look into the status of patients, since the fear of deportation would lead some people to avoid treatment, resulting in avoidable deaths.<\/p>\n But if you had to take a headcount, based on whether people were likely to honestly fill out a census, or register with a doctor free of charge, I would imagine that the latter gave a more accurate picture.<\/p>\n But the truth is \u2013 we just don\u2019t know. In fact, everything is a mystery. In November last year, for example, \u2018the Home Office admitted<\/a>\u00a0it does not know the whereabouts of more than 17,000 asylum seekers whose claims have been discontinued.\u2019<\/p>\n When Lee Anderson asked Home Office officials how many people arriving on\u00a0small boats had been returned, they didn\u2019t know either.<\/a>\u00a0\u2018The big boss hasn\u2019t got a clue\u2019, he concluded.<\/p>\n Tory MP Neil O\u2019Brien\u00a0found that<\/a>\u00a0even the Migration Advisory Committee was \u2018unable to estimate how many graduate visa holders leave the country before their visa expires, and the Home Office is currently unable to supply this data. O\u2019Brien has been pushing for greater transparency\u00a0on immigration data, which the authorities seem reluctant to give.<\/a><\/p>\n If this all seems odd, then consider how Britain actually records people who come in and out of the country. Until the pandemic, we did so by hiring people to stand around\u00a0asking random travellers, as the BBC explained.<\/a><\/p>\n For 362 days a year, IPS staff leap in front of travellers at 19 airports, eight ports and the Channel Tunnel rail link. They ask them for a bit of their life story: where they\u2019re from, why they\u2019re in the UK and how long they might be staying.<\/p>\n Up to 800,000 people a year take part and about 250,000 of those results are put through the statistical mixer to come up with an estimate for the number of people either arriving to live in the UK, or leaving the UK for at least a year \u2013\u00a0the internationally-agreed definition of a long-term migrant.<\/p>\n But the IPS doesn\u2019t cover all the ports, all of the time. In Dover there are up to 51 ferry arrivals a day \u2013\u00a0and the IPS only covers four days\u2019 worth of them over an entire year. The nationwide sample works out at just over 1 per cent of Heathrow\u2019s annual traffic of 78 million people.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n According to the\u00a0Sea Venture Substack<\/a>, \u2018between 2015 and 2017 at least 601,000 people expected to subsequently leave\u00a0never had an exit recorded<\/a>. The government simply couldn\u2019t say whether they went home or not. You might imagine (we have a hostile environment policy, after all) that this would trigger vans of burly immigration officers banging on doors. In fact,\u00a0no attempt at all was made to even contact them<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2018Ignore whatever Home Secretaries and NGOs say about deportations: not only do we not look for overstayers, we often don\u2019t know they exist. In the same time period 201,000 different people were picked up on exit checks who\u00a0we didn\u2019t know were actually here until they flew out.\u2019<\/p>\n As one of the smartest Twitter accounts explains,\u00a0Britain is unusual in<\/a>:\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2018not having an ID system. There is no central register of residents or citizens. People prove their identity through random documents (driving licences, utility bills), and businesses check against incomplete databases (especially credit rating agencies). The UK does not systematically collect data on people entering and leaving the country. Many regular border crossings aren\u2019t centrally recorded. To be clear: unless you fly in, it\u2019s perfectly possible to cross the British border undetected. This is particularly true of sea and rail. A Blair-era attempt to fix this (eBorders) was abandoned in 2014. The British government is simply uninterested in the problem.<\/p>\n On a statistical level, there is even more confusion. The Office for National Statistics uses an incredibly dated methodology to estimate net immigration: standing at the airport asking random travellers if they plan to stay in the UK\u2026 The ONS write at length defending their methods, but underlying it is the assumption that people will reply accurately to a letter from the government asking them to list everyone living at an address. Which in modern Britain just isn\u2019t plausible. Housing and immigration policy give many people in the UK a strong incentive to misrepresent their residency, in a way that can only be picked up on anecdotally, or when forced into the open by a freak event.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n He concludes by asking \u2018what would a country that undercounted its population look like? You\u2019d see higher than expected pressure on public services, housing, and infrastructure. It would seem to be inexplicably poorer than its GDP per capita.\u2019<\/p>\n You would, for example, have a large problem with Dickensian slums, with landlords packing up to\u00a040 people into four-bedroom houses.<\/a>\u00a0You would have scenes of\u00a0overcrowded squalor<\/a>\u00a0becoming common. You would have people\u00a0living in sheds and garages along the back streets of suburban<\/a>\u00a0London.\u00a0<\/p>\n You\u2019d have a shadow world of which the authorities, and the middle class, were largely unaware of until unexpected events brought them to their attention. This became apparent after the Grenfell tragedy, in which dozens of people died while living in unsafe social housing within a short walk from some of the most luxurious streets in Europe. The state had little idea of who actually lived in Grenfell, because subletting is so common. Since that awful event, no fewer than 14 people have been convicted of fraudulently claiming to have lived in the block of flats, with just a few examples found\u00a0here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Britain is\u00a0a surveillance state<\/a>, but one where the authorities are clueless about who comes in and out, and where they end up. Conspiracy theories are clearly not healthy, but they tend to grow in the absence of clear and honest information.<\/p>\n Tony Blair was right: ID cards are clearly needed<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Census-taking is one of the older functions of a government, after tax-raising, law and order and border enforcement. Even the Roman Empire, far less sophisticated than modern states, had a rough idea of who lived inside its borders. We often hear Christian leaders telling us that we should welcome illegal immigrants because the Holy Family, too, were refugees, but at least Joseph and Mary took part in the census.<\/p>\n Britain\u2019s population is growing very quickly, and this is now almost entirely down to immigration. Last year, half a century after the country entered sub-replacement fertility,\u00a0deaths exceeded births<\/a>\u00a0for the first time in Britain, and that process will only accelerate.<\/p>\n According to some estimates, about 3.6 per cent of the entire population of Britain\u00a0have only arrived in the past two years<\/a>. To put that in context, our history books often cite the Huguenots as an example of Britain\u2019s history of immigration, and they accounted for about 1 per cent of the population.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s also a problem that we simply don\u2019t know who is coming in and out, which means that we are unable to prevent criminals sneaking back into the\u00a0country<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0even getting jobs with the NHS.<\/a><\/p>\n This was recognised as a problem by Tony Blair, who tried to introduce ID cards, an idea abandoned by the Conservatives in the face of civil liberty objections both from the right and left, as well as cost issues.<\/p>\n I used to be against ID cards, mainly for irrationally reactionary vibes reasons\u00a0\u2013\u00a0we didn\u2019t have them in 1913 when, as AJP Taylor put it, an Englishman\u2019s only contact with the state would be the Post Office and local policeman. Plus, Tony Blair was in favour \u2013 what other arguments do you need? But Blair was right, and ID cards are clearly now needed.<\/p>\n The\u00a0new e-visa system<\/a>\u00a0should mean that we have a better idea of who has entered and exited the country, but as with so many aspects of anarcho-tyranny, it will only work in recording those who play by the rules.<\/p>\n\n
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