Where do refugees to the UK come from? *Updated* version of my squiggly chart and updated briefing on asylum statistics.

Oh Sir Ian 😢 How flawed data is leaving the UK in the dark via @ft

A truly shocking read

Can't believe it's still over two months until this comes out... but we now have a pre-order link, so it is starting to feel real 🙌 Pre-order here: Release date: 10 April

I'm very excited to announce that my new book SUM OF US: A History of the UK in Data will be published this April by Bridge Street Press @LittleBrownUK I had a lot of fun writing it and I can't wait to hear people’s reaction to the more surprising elements of this history!

UK policy makers are 'flying blind' on topics including population size, the labour market and household saving and spending. Why? response rates to surveys - our source of this data - have badly declined. Article here in The Times (though paywalled)⬇️

I haven’t had time to look into the offence-specific claims but imagine conclusion would be similar. And the important takeaway here is that *we do not know any of this for a fact.* Our population statistics are very patchy/ holey at the moment so honestly we don’t really know.

So the rate is still higher for foreign nationals? Yes, perhaps, although possibly not by as much as is being claimed. And there are some reasons we might expect a higher rate among foreign nationals…

Taking all that into account, my estimate using these FOI arrest figures would be: - 19 per 1,000 for foreign nationals - 17 per 1,000 for British nationals. Main arrest data here:

Second problem is that the arrest rate is not 12 per 1,000 across the UK. UK rate is unknown since policing is devolved. A more reasonable estimate for Eng & Wales, in my view, would be around 17 per 1,000.

A problem here is that the pop of foreign nationals in the UK is almost certainly not 5.5 million. Simply put, we don’t know the true figure. A fairer estimate would be around *8 million* (using census data & net migration since 2021). And this is for Eng & Wales, not the UK.

I’ve been looking more closely at this recent FOI data on arrests by nationality and I’m not sure we can take it at face value. Foreigners much more likely to be arrested than British nationals? That’s not conclusive. 🧵

Previous years' funding settlements can be found here:

"The LFS has suffered from a deep slump in response rates, a problem that got so bad that economists no longer fully trust the flagship jobs report... And the problems call into question recent policy priorities." Bad British data in the NY Times ⬇

@ONS There isn't an obvious Islamic-origin girls name even in the top 50 (Zara possibly the highest at 73). So I think the reason Mohammed is on top is that there is *way* less variation in Muslim boys' names then girls' names (& names of children from other backgrounds in general).

Excellent piece from @M_Sumption on why the UK's net migration figures keep being revised. Revisions in the 50,000s and 100,000s are the new normal. The shock over the 2011 census figures I wrote about in Bad Data is starting to look a bit... quaint?