Government 'misled' the public with immigration statistics

An "unbalanced" and "misleading" view of immigration has been presented to the public by ministers, Britain's top statisticians claim today.

In a letter to the Home Office, the Royal Statistical Society also claims the Government has breached its own rules with "serious" bad practices which have undermined public faith in official statistics.

The attack follows the presence of a Home Office press officer at a conference run by the independent UK Statistics Authority to release around 20 official statistical reports on migration Authority last month.

The spokesman was at the event in breach of official guidelines and handed out a ministerial press release containing a selective batch of facts favourable to the Government drawn from the reports. At the same time, ministers failed to send some of the most potentially controversial documents to the event.

In today's letter, Professor David Hand, president of the Royal Statistical Society, says that his members had "deep concern" about the Government's conduct in issuing a misleading press release alongside the official statistics and claims it was a deliberate attempt to "skew" coverage in their favour.