According to the Home Office, there are most likely about 430,000 illegal immigrants in the country, but their number could be somewhere between 310,000 and 570,000. The opposition Conservative Party claims that immigration policy is in a deplorable state. These figures should have been published during the election campaign, the Tories say.
According to the Home Office estimate, as reported by BBC, in 2001 about 430,000 people were in the country illegally, which is 0.7% of the total population of the United Kingdom (that is, one illegal immigrant for every 142 people). This number does not include those whose asylum applications have been accepted for consideration, nor those who have appealed against a refusal.
The figure was obtained from the results of the 2001 census, which also counted foreigners. At the same time, ministry experts tried to determine how many of the newcomers live in the country illegally. Home Office representatives say that some illegal immigrants filled in census forms. To this number, the ministry added as many as, in its estimation, refused to take part in the census.
Deputy Immigration Minister Tony McNulty stresses that this figure is only one of the possible ones and should not be seen as final. "No government is able to give an exact figure for the number of people who are in the country illegally," he said. McNulty believes that everything indicates that the country needs to introduce identity cards. In his opinion, this would help control illegal immigration.
The government's estimate became known the day after the House of Commons, in the second reading, passed the government's plan to introduce identity cards in the country, albeit with a reduced majority. During the recent election campaign, Prime Minister Tony Blair refused to estimate the number of illegal immigrants in the country. The Conservatives, who are in opposition, say the current Home Office estimate shows that Blair was wrong.
"The admission that there are more than 500,000 illegal immigrants in the country sounds like a shocking indictment of the immigration policy pursued by Labour," said the Tories' shadow home secretary, David Davis. Another Conservative MP, Patrick Mercer, added: "I insist that the prime minister misled us for his own political gain on the eve of the election."
During the election campaign, ministers in Tony Blair's government called the figure of 500,000 illegal immigrants quoted by expert John Salt "extremely inaccurate". The Home Office claims that the current figures only became known to the government at the end of May, after the elections had already taken place.