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0:41

Hello and welcome to More

0:43

or Less. We are the

0:45

very model of a modern

0:47

new statistic show. Expect economics,

0:49

fact checks and many cheerful

0:51

facts about the square of

0:53

the hypotenuse. And in particular,

0:55

expect us to investigate the

0:57

claim that one in 12

0:59

Londoners is an illegal immigrant,

1:01

which comes from, well, not the

1:04

source you might expect. And...

1:06

The claim that New Zealand

1:08

apples are particularly environmentally friendly,

1:10

which comes from exactly the

1:12

source you might expect, namely

1:14

New Zealand. Our loyal listeners

1:16

are wondering whether VAT on

1:18

private schools really has boosted

1:20

the rate of inflation, or

1:22

if that's just a media

1:24

concoction. But first, it's been

1:26

12 weeks since President Trump

1:28

announced the formation of Doge,

1:30

the so-called Department of Government

1:32

of Government Efficiency. Led or

1:34

not led but definitely quite

1:36

led by his special advisor

1:38

Elon Musk. Musk claimed that

1:40

he could save the US

1:42

government two trillion dollars a

1:45

year. We asked Linda Bilmez,

1:47

someone who was part of

1:49

the team who actually balanced

1:51

the US budget under President

1:53

Clinton, whether this was plausible.

1:55

The two trillion number over a

1:58

decade is a realistic goal. but

2:00

the only way you could cut

2:02

two trillion out of the budget

2:04

in a year is in the

2:06

shooting yourself in the head kind

2:08

of mechanism. Cool. Since then there

2:10

have been a raft of

2:12

cuts to public spending and

2:14

claims about various acts of

2:17

fraud that probably haven't happened.

2:19

To celebrate their achievement we

2:21

have compiled a lovely little

2:24

presentation. I do hope you

2:26

enjoy. In

2:29

the last week of January,

2:31

the USAID website went offline

2:33

and thousands of U.S. workers

2:36

abroad were told to return

2:38

home. President Trump announced that

2:41

the Department of Government Efficiency

2:43

had saved the U.S. tons

2:45

of money, including... We identified

2:48

and stopped $50 million being

2:50

sent to Gaza to buy

2:53

condoms for Hamas. There is a

2:55

report, or was a report, of all

2:57

of their condom procurement that showed that

2:59

none of it had gone to Gaza.

3:01

That report has now been taken down,

3:04

along with the entire U.S. Agency for

3:06

International Development website. So they pointed at

3:08

one point to funding that was going

3:10

to field hospitals in Gaza. That was

3:12

about $50 million, but of course that

3:14

was for field hospitals. I have no

3:16

idea where they got the notion that

3:18

it was for condoms. There is no

3:20

money, as far as I can

3:22

tell, going to Gaza for condom

3:24

procurement. There are a number of

3:27

different Gaza-related options that, you know,

3:29

this could actually be. Ball funding

3:31

that is going to Gaza and

3:33

funding that is going to the

3:36

Gaza province of Mozambique. The

3:38

whole condom statistical mishap

3:40

was inconceivable, but not

3:43

unique. On to the next one. There's

3:49

crazy things like just grocery

3:51

examination of Social Security and we're good

3:53

people in there about a hundred and

3:55

fifty years old. Now do you know

3:57

anyone a hundred and fifty? I don't,

3:59

okay. Elon Musk. He later tweeted

4:02

that the Social Security Administration

4:04

in the United States might

4:06

be the biggest source of

4:08

fraud in the whole of

4:11

human history. Perhaps the most

4:13

shocking was the revelation that

4:15

deceased people who would have

4:17

been 120 to 150 years

4:20

old are still receiving Social

4:22

Security payments totaling billions of

4:24

dollars per month. This turned

4:26

out to be just a

4:29

programming quirk. If the date

4:31

of birth is not known,

4:33

the computer system defaults to

4:35

a date of birth of

4:37

the 20th of May 1875,

4:40

under the star sign, appropriately

4:42

enough, of Taurus the Bull.

4:44

More generally there is a

4:46

problem. Some people just don't

4:49

have their deaths recorded in

4:51

the database. which means that

4:53

according to the Department of

4:55

Social Security there are currently

4:58

18.9 million people aged over

5:00

100 in the United States,

5:02

which is definitely not right.

5:04

And this opens the door

5:06

to potential fraud. But two

5:09

reports from the Inspector General

5:11

found that officials also noted

5:13

that almost none of the

5:15

18.9 million number holders currently

5:18

receive SSA payments. Instead, the

5:20

type of fraud that occurs

5:22

is largely immigrants using the

5:24

social security numbers of dead

5:27

people to pay taxes so

5:29

they can get jobs. So,

5:31

again, billions have not been

5:33

saved. On to the next.

5:36

Has the government really spent

5:38

$8 million on making mice

5:40

transgender? I don't think it

5:42

means what you think it

5:44

means. This is real. When

5:47

challenged on this claim, the

5:49

White House produced a list

5:51

of studies whose grants all

5:53

added up to around $8

5:56

million. Last night, President Donald

5:58

J. Trump highlighted many... of

6:00

the egregious examples of waste,

6:02

fraud, and abuse funded by

6:05

American taxpayers, including $8 million

6:07

spent by the Biden administration

6:09

for making mice transgender. The fake

6:11

news losers at CNN immediately

6:14

tried to fact-check it, but

6:16

President Trump was right, as

6:18

usual. What interesting language for

6:20

an official governmental statement. Anyway, we've

6:22

been through the list, and this

6:25

is what we found. Most of

6:27

the studies were looking at the

6:29

impacts of hormone therapy. One such

6:31

study looked at whether people born

6:33

male who took estrogen supplements would

6:35

be more at risk of getting

6:37

breast cancer. Another looked into whether

6:39

these medicines could change the effectiveness

6:42

of a potential HIV vaccine. One

6:44

of the trials studied the effects

6:46

of hormones more generally, looking at

6:49

the link between estrogen and asthma.

6:51

And one of the studies which

6:53

cost more than a million

6:55

of this supposed $8 million

6:57

was nothing to do with

6:59

hormones at all. It involved

7:01

an entirely different form of

7:03

trans mice. Transgenic mice, meaning

7:06

genetically engineered, not transgender.

7:08

The mice are also

7:10

not transmorphic, translucent or

7:12

transformers. As

7:18

part of their effort to prove

7:21

to the US how incredibly

7:23

efficient there being, Doge posted

7:25

a list called the Wall

7:27

of Receats, detailing contracts they

7:29

have cancelled and what savings

7:31

those represented. But soon after,

7:33

the five biggest savings on

7:35

that original list were deleted,

7:37

after members of the press

7:39

pointed out errors. One of these

7:41

so-called savings was cutting a contract

7:44

Doge said was worth $8 billion.

7:46

although it turns out the contract

7:48

was actually worth $8 million, which

7:51

to the nearest percent is 0%

7:53

of $8 billion. By early March,

7:55

Doge had erased or altered

7:57

more than a thousand contracts.

8:00

on this wall of

8:02

receipts, more than 40%

8:04

of all the contracts

8:06

posted. This includes our

8:08

next number. Dosh claimed

8:10

that they'd cancelled $

8:12

133 million US aid

8:14

contract to an agency

8:16

in Libya. However, this

8:18

contract had actually come

8:20

to its end under

8:22

the Biden administration. So,

8:24

again, no. $1.9

8:27

billion. Wowser! Doge claimed that they

8:30

had severed an internal revenue service

8:32

contract for a company that provides

8:34

assistance with technology. Only, again, this

8:36

contract had been cancelled during the

8:39

Biden administration. So how much has

8:41

Elon actually saved the US government?

8:43

In the category of contracts, Doge

8:46

are now claiming $15 billion in

8:48

savings. which is less than 1%

8:50

of his $2 trillion target. For

8:53

government agencies, it's difficult to say,

8:55

as most staff whose jobs are

8:57

potentially being cut are being put

8:59

on paid administrative leave. So they're

9:02

paying people, but they're not getting

9:04

any productivity or output out of

9:06

them. Now, Elon Musk has had

9:09

some of these mistakes pointed out

9:11

to him, and he's acknowledged them,

9:13

such as the $50 million worth

9:16

of condons. Well first of all,

9:18

some of the things that I

9:20

say will be incorrect and should

9:23

be corrected. Agreed. So the fact-checking

9:25

losers at more or less will

9:27

keep checking those facts and we'll

9:29

keep you abreast of what we

9:32

find. If you want updates all

9:34

year round, even when we're not

9:36

on Radio 4, you will find

9:39

them on our weekend podcast. You're

9:41

listening to More or Less. UK inflation

9:43

has gone up from 2.5% to 3%

9:45

and it was reported that this increase

9:48

was driven by a rise in airfares,

9:50

food and adding VAT to private school

9:52

fees. But a number of our listeners

9:54

email in to check if that last

9:57

one was right. They asked, can the

9:59

new VAT requirements have really made a

10:01

difference when private schools are only used

10:03

by a small proportion of the population?

10:06

Or are the newspapers just mentioning it

10:08

because it's topical? Or possibly because some

10:10

newspaper editors send their kids to private

10:12

school. To find out the truth we

10:14

spoke to Stephen Burgess from the Office

10:17

for National Statistics. They're the people responsible

10:19

for calculating inflation. I started by asking

10:21

him, how much of an impact did

10:23

VAT on private schools really have on

10:26

inflation? Inflation on the CPIH measure, which

10:28

is our broadest measure, rose from 3.5%

10:30

in December to 3.9% in January, so

10:32

that's the rise of about 0.4, and

10:35

of that we think 0.06 was due

10:37

to private school fees, with bigger contributions

10:39

coming from food and from air fares.

10:41

So private schools were responsible for almost

10:44

a sixth of the total change then.

10:46

Enough to justify being mentioned in a

10:48

news article. But before we dig into

10:50

this, I suppose we should first establish

10:53

what do the ONS do to calculate

10:55

inflation? What we're trying to do is

10:57

to track the average price of all

10:59

the goods and services that all consumers

11:02

of the UK buy and how that's

11:04

changing over time. In order to do

11:06

that, I mean, you'd also have good

11:08

information about prices. We collect thousands and

11:10

thousands of prices from the variety of

11:13

shops and of services as well. And

11:15

you can imagine a sort of basket

11:17

of goods and services that is fixed

11:19

every time and we track the prices

11:22

in that. So why are private schools

11:24

included in this basket if not many

11:26

people use them? I think the important

11:28

point here is it's about total household

11:31

spending across all consumers, not what you

11:33

might think of as a kind of

11:35

stylised representative household. So actually smoking is

11:37

what a good example on this. We

11:40

think only about 12% of adults in

11:42

the UK smoke nowadays smoke nowadays, but

11:44

still we spend about 20 billion pounds.

11:46

collectively in the UK on cigarettes and

11:49

other tobacco products each year, which is

11:51

about 1.5% of all our spending. So

11:53

that's significant enough for it to go

11:55

in the inflation basket. And it's very

11:58

similar for private school fees. As you

12:00

say, we think only about 6% of

12:02

children attend independent schools, but for those

12:04

families that do send their children buried,

12:06

that's enough spending to justify including in

12:09

the basket. So informally, we have a

12:11

sort of threshold of about 400 million

12:13

pounds of expenditure that an item has

12:15

to see in a year before we

12:18

think about including it. So private school

12:20

fees are well above that threshold. So

12:22

we're not trying to say, okay, what

12:24

is the average consumer spend or what

12:27

is the typical consumer spend? We're trying

12:29

to get the average of all the

12:31

spending, which is not quite the same

12:33

thing. And people who do send their

12:36

children to private schools, and they're spending

12:38

probably tens of thousands of pounds. So

12:40

if there's a 20% increase or anything

12:42

close to a 20% increase in that,

12:45

that's going to show up in the

12:47

overall statistics, even though the actual number

12:49

of people involved is quite small. But

12:51

exactly how is the impact of private

12:53

school fees worked out? It's about 700%

12:56

of items that we track. And then

12:58

a really important point is that we

13:00

have to apply weights to those. So

13:02

not every good or service gets equal

13:05

amounts of spending. In the UK, for

13:07

example, we spend about twice as much

13:09

collectively on food as we do on

13:11

clothing. So we have to reflect that

13:14

when we aggregate figures. Yeah, so if

13:16

the price of food went up, that

13:18

would count twice as much. towards the

13:20

overall basket as if the price of

13:23

clothing went up because people spend twice

13:25

as much on food. Yes. Thank you,

13:27

Stephen Burgess from the Office for National

13:29

Statistics. I'm

13:31

Zing Singh and I'm Simon Jack and

13:34

together we host Good Bad billionaire the

13:36

podcast exploring the lies of some of

13:38

the world's richest people in the new

13:40

season We're setting our sights on some

13:42

big names. Yep LeBron James and Martha

13:44

Stewart to name just a few and

13:46

as always Simon and I are trying

13:48

to decide whether we think they're good

13:50

bad or just another billionaire that's good

13:52

bad billionaire from the BBC world service

13:55

Listen now wherever you get your BBC

13:57

podcasts The

14:03

other day our editor came across

14:05

an interesting claim on a Twitter

14:07

thread about the carbon dioxide emissions

14:09

associated with producing various foodstuffs. In

14:11

the UK carbon emissions from New

14:13

Zealand grown apples are 32% lower

14:16

than apples grown domestically, including emissions

14:18

from shipping. Interesting. Now I've heard

14:20

similar claims before about New Zealand

14:22

lamb and about Spanish tomatoes. You

14:24

may need to ship them from

14:26

Spain, but you don't need to

14:28

heat the greenhouses when you grow

14:31

them. But apples? I always thought

14:33

apples were kind of our thing.

14:35

After all, it was allegedly an

14:37

English apple that discovered gravity in

14:39

1666. So are New Zealand apples

14:41

more green than English ones? Other

14:44

colours of apple are available, red,

14:46

deliciously golden, or pink or... Well,

14:48

the claim comes from a paper

14:50

published in 2006 in 2006. titled

14:52

Food Miles and the Impact on

14:54

Carbon Footprinting and their potential impact

14:56

on trade. The paper was produced

14:59

by a team from New Zealand

15:01

who realised that people were starting

15:03

to worry about the environmental impact

15:05

of food miles, which is a

15:07

problem for New Zealand because they

15:09

make a lot of food a

15:11

lot of miles away from everywhere

15:14

else. This report calculates all of

15:16

the energy used during the cultivation

15:18

and production stage and gives it

15:20

a CO2 equivalent. per ton of

15:22

apple produced. The report found that

15:24

even including shipping, apples imported to

15:26

the UK from New Zealand cost

15:29

185 kilograms of CO2 for every

15:31

ton of apple versus 272 kilograms

15:33

for varieties grown in the UK.

15:35

So 32% less. That seems shocking

15:37

to some, but not to everyone.

15:39

So if you look at globally

15:42

emissions from the food system, Food

15:44

miles of food. transport only contributes

15:46

around 5 to 6% globally. So

15:48

it's actually much much smaller fraction

15:50

than I think many people would

15:52

assume. Ah, our friend Dr Hannah

15:54

Ritchie, deputy editor of Our World

15:57

in Data and senior researcher at

15:59

the University of Oxford. Food can

16:01

contribute to climate change in lots

16:03

of ways, from the methane burps

16:05

of cows and sheep, to the

16:07

chainsawing of forests to allow animals

16:09

to graze. to the energy required

16:12

to produce fertilizer. But apple production

16:14

is relatively low emission, which means

16:16

that for apples, transport may be

16:18

a more significant proportion of the

16:20

environmental footprint. As a global average

16:22

for apples, it's around 20%. One

16:24

of the reasons for that is

16:27

that the emissions that are associated

16:29

with... land use and emissions on

16:31

the farm for apples are actually

16:33

very low compared to many other

16:35

food choices. So if you think

16:37

about it, even if the amount

16:40

of emissions associated with transporting a

16:42

kilogram of beef and a kilogram

16:44

of apples is the same, right?

16:46

Say we're shipping beef and apples

16:48

all the way from New Zealand

16:50

and the emissions associated that is

16:52

the same. you would expect that

16:55

as a share of the total

16:57

carbon footprint of a food, transport

16:59

would be much lower for beef

17:01

than it is for apples. And

17:03

that's because the total amount of

17:05

emissions associated with the lunges change

17:07

and producing the food is much

17:10

higher for beef than it is

17:12

for apples. So this 20% transport...

17:14

point for apples is actually just

17:16

a very clear indication that the

17:18

carbon footprint of apples, whether it's

17:20

UK-based, whether it's New Zealand-based, is

17:22

actually very very low, right? Apples

17:25

are a relatively low carbon food.

17:27

It's probably unsurprising that apples are

17:29

a low-carbon food as they grow

17:31

on trees, the so-called lungs of

17:33

the earth. But if they're so

17:35

low-carbon, why on earth would it

17:38

be more environmentally beneficial to... ship

17:40

them to somewhere else. The simple

17:42

answer is that New Zealand has

17:44

the potential to produce more apples

17:46

in less space. Something to do

17:48

with the fact that they have

17:50

more sun feels like cheating. And

17:53

that means the potential to use

17:55

less fuel and less fertilizer. And

17:57

there are maybe two main reasons

17:59

why, or two main reasons in

18:01

the study, why you might assume

18:03

producing apples in the UK emits

18:05

more carbon in New Zealand. And

18:08

one of the factors is... yield

18:10

and productivity of farming. So we

18:12

know that apple yield in New

18:14

Zealand are about 30% higher than

18:16

they are in the UK. I

18:18

think when you're comparing yield, one

18:20

is the total amount of produce

18:23

that you can produce for a

18:25

given unit of area of land.

18:27

I think what's also key for

18:29

productivity is that if you have

18:31

very very productive plants, often you

18:33

can get a larger number of

18:36

apples for less inputs. And in

18:38

this case, less inputs might be...

18:40

Fertilizer use, right? So if you

18:42

have a better climate, if you

18:44

maybe have better apple varieties that

18:46

are more productive, you might need

18:48

less of, say, fertilizer to produce

18:51

a given amount of apples. Six

18:53

months in a fridge is a

18:55

lot of electricity, but we're not

18:57

sure the comparison is quite fair.

18:59

The report from New Zealand, assumed

19:01

New Zealand apples are consumed as

19:03

soon as they arrive in the

19:06

UK. That's not true. New Zealand

19:08

apples will also often be refrigerated

19:10

until needed. And research from 2006

19:12

is missing something important about the

19:14

cost of all that refrigeration. The

19:16

UK has really cleaned up its

19:18

electricity grid, so emissions per unit

19:21

of electricity in the UK have

19:23

more than halved. And a big

19:25

part of that is because we've

19:27

basically got rid of coal. We

19:29

were still getting around one third

19:31

of our electricity from coal. And

19:34

coal is obviously the worst fuel

19:36

you can really use in terms

19:38

of producing electricity for its... impact

19:40

and we've now basically got rid

19:42

of coal completely from the grid.

19:44

So I think these two factors

19:46

probably have closed the gap between

19:49

the emissions associated with New Zealand

19:51

apples and UK apples. Dr. Hannah

19:53

Ritchie, author of Not the End

19:55

of the World. We contacted Caroline

19:57

Saunders, the lead on the original

19:59

paper and ex-director of the Agribusiness

20:01

and Economics Unit at the University

20:04

of Lincoln. She agreed that the

20:06

paper was written a long time

20:08

ago, so things would be different

20:10

now. We think it can make

20:12

environmental sense to eat apples from

20:14

New Zealand in the UK, but

20:16

we also think the idea that

20:19

imported New Zealand apples contribute almost

20:21

a third less CO2 emissions was

20:23

questionable back in 2006 and is

20:25

definitely not true today. In fact,

20:27

any comparison is potentially misleading because

20:29

the emissions are so dependent on

20:32

the season. If you want to

20:34

eat apples in the most responsible

20:36

way, eat British apples in the

20:38

winter and New Zealand apples in

20:40

the spring. And in the meantime,

20:42

maybe have a biscuit. Several loyal

20:44

listeners got in touch about a

20:47

claim they'd seen in various newspapers.

20:49

Patient zero, it turns out, was

20:51

the front page of the telegraph.

20:53

Up to one in 12 in

20:55

London is an illegal migrant. That

20:57

seems like a big number, if

20:59

true, but is it true. Here

21:02

to tell us more is our

21:04

very own Charlotte McDonald. Hello Charlotte.

21:06

Hello Tim. So Charlotte where did

21:08

the telegraph get this number? Well

21:10

not from the Office for National

21:12

Statistics. It was actually based on

21:14

a study commissioned for internal use

21:17

only by Thames Water. Thames Water.

21:19

Thames Water. Yeah they wanted to

21:21

figure out how many people live

21:23

in the area they supply which

21:25

by the way isn't the same

21:27

as the official boundary of London.

21:30

But let's let that one slide.

21:32

That estimate needed to include people

21:34

such as tourists, people with second

21:36

homes, refugees from Ukraine. and also

21:38

unauthorized immigrants. And the telegraph got

21:40

their hands on the report that

21:42

Thameswater commissioned. And do we believe

21:45

the numbers? Well we don't believe

21:47

the maths. The telegraph made one

21:49

fairly elementary math era and had

21:51

to correct the ratio from one

21:53

in 12 to one in 13

21:55

once that was pointed out. And

21:57

they also rather cheekly looked at

22:00

a range of estimates in the

22:02

Thameswater report and pitched the biggest.

22:04

The mid-range would put the ratio

22:06

at one in 15. Well I

22:08

suppose we should have seen that

22:10

one coming with a phrase up

22:12

to. Up to anything always means

22:15

it could be this big but

22:17

it probably isn't. But Charlotte what

22:19

I'm really wondering is how reliable

22:21

Thameswater's underlying numbers are. I mean

22:23

Thameswater are famous for, well it'd

22:25

be cruel to say what they're

22:28

famous for, but let's just say

22:30

they're a water company, they're not

22:32

a census bureau. So where did

22:34

they get their numbers and can

22:36

we trust them? The underlying data

22:38

comes from a respected American think

22:40

tank called the Pew Research Centre,

22:43

but Pew's numbers were based on

22:45

data from back in 2017. They

22:47

were also for the UK as

22:49

a whole. So, Thames Water's consultants,

22:51

Edge Analytics, had to make various

22:53

assumptions to get a number for

22:55

London. And where did Pew get

22:58

their figure from? Well, the Pew

23:00

Research Centre estimated that they were

23:02

about... a million irregular migrants in

23:04

the UK back in 2017 plus

23:06

or minus a couple of hundred

23:08

thousand, they derive that estimate using

23:10

something called the residual method. That's

23:13

where you take the official statistic

23:15

for the number of migrants in

23:17

a country's population, in this case

23:19

the number of non-EU nationals. Then,

23:21

using official data still, you remove

23:23

all the people you know have

23:26

a legal right to be in

23:28

the country. So people with visas

23:30

to study and to work. then

23:32

those with residency rights in the

23:34

country. And then once you've removed

23:36

all the people with the right

23:38

to be in the country, the

23:41

number you have left, the residual,

23:43

is the amount they believe is

23:45

the irregular migrant population. But the

23:47

key thing with this method is

23:49

you must make sure you subtract

23:51

all the relevant groups if you

23:53

want to end up with the

23:56

right answer. And we're not sure

23:58

they did. Tell me more. Well,

24:00

one of the biggest criticisms of

24:02

the peer research is that they

24:04

miss out a large group of

24:06

people who have the right to

24:08

be in the UK legally. We

24:11

think Pew got their numbers from

24:13

the UK submission to the EU

24:15

Statistical Office Eurostat. And because UK

24:17

doesn't have a formal population registration

24:19

system, unlike many EU countries, the

24:21

UK's numbers weren't easy to interpret.

24:24

They included people with visas, but

24:26

not foreign nationals, with something called

24:28

Leave to Remain. Well that sounds

24:30

like a pretty massive oversight. Yeah,

24:32

and we're not sure that's what

24:34

Pew did, but several experts think

24:36

that's what happened. And we've invited

24:39

you to tell us otherwise, if

24:41

they wish, and they haven't so

24:43

far. Would it make a big

24:45

difference? Well, yeah, but we don't

24:47

know how big. The Windrush scandal

24:49

is a reminder that the Home

24:51

Office record keeping hasn't always been

24:54

great. We think that since 2004,

24:56

over 860,000 people have been granted

24:58

leave to remain, and we know

25:00

that at least 280,000 have not

25:02

gone on to claim citizenship. The

25:04

OSN estimates that around 250,000 people

25:06

were given leave to remain before

25:09

1993, but some of these people

25:11

will have died or left the

25:13

UK. So as patchy as it

25:15

is, you do have some numbers

25:17

for people with leave to remain

25:19

and we're talking about hundreds of

25:22

thousands of people. So that means

25:24

they haven't done enough subtraction to

25:26

come up with the right answer.

25:28

Yeah, but on the other hand,

25:30

this method is probably undercounting the

25:32

number of people here because certain

25:34

groups... don't want to be included

25:37

and are probably trying to avoid

25:39

being counted, although researchers do try

25:41

to account for that in their

25:43

estimates. Here's Meekin Aquibus, a researcher

25:45

at the Migration Observatory at the

25:47

University of Oxford. The simple answer

25:49

is that we simply don't know

25:52

how many unauthorized migrants there are

25:54

in London or the UK in

25:56

general. issue is that there is

25:58

no data available on this population

26:00

which makes it impossible to say

26:02

with any degree of precision what

26:04

the actual number is or even

26:07

how close all these different estimates

26:09

that we've seen going around are

26:11

to the truth. Right so what

26:13

I'm hearing is that the Thames

26:15

Water Report involves educated guesses built

26:17

on educated guesses that it's based

26:20

on data that's eight years old.

26:22

that it suggests one in 15

26:24

Londoners are irregular migrants, not one

26:26

in 12 or one in 13,

26:28

and that actually many of those

26:30

people aren't irregular migrants at all,

26:32

they have leave to remain, but

26:35

they've been miscategorised. What a mess!

26:37

Do we have any other sources

26:39

of data that might let us

26:41

cross-check these estimates? A few other

26:43

researchers have used the residual method

26:45

to make an estimate for irregular

26:47

migrants. Their numbers are lower than

26:50

Pews and they're also quite old

26:52

now. Jonathan Porter's Professor of Economics

26:54

and Public Policy at King's College

26:56

London has pointed out that we

26:58

do have some administrative data which

27:00

we can use to sort of

27:02

sense check how much of an

27:05

issue it is. So when the

27:07

police did an exercise where they

27:09

checked the migration status of everyone

27:11

they arrested, they found, perhaps unsurprisingly,

27:13

that foreign nationals were almost exactly

27:15

as likely to be arrested as

27:18

Brits. portion of irregular migrants was

27:20

absolutely tiny down at the sort

27:22

of 1% level. So that would

27:24

suggest that only a relatively small

27:26

proportion even of Londoners are irregular

27:28

migrants. Now, of course, you might

27:30

say, well, irregular migrants, for obvious

27:33

reasons, try not to get arrested.

27:35

because it might lead to them

27:37

being discovered. So there's a selection

27:39

bias there. But nonetheless, the actual

27:41

proportion of irregular migrants in the

27:43

population might be significantly lower than

27:45

suggested by some of the estimates

27:48

that have been widely publicized. Not

27:50

only that, but since Pew published

27:52

its research, based on data from

27:54

2017, we know there's been a

27:56

big increase in legal... immigration. So

27:58

all in all, coming up with

28:00

a good estimate figure for a

28:03

group that might not want to

28:05

be counted is very difficult. Well

28:07

thank you Charlotte. That's all we

28:09

have time for, but please keep

28:11

your questions and comments coming in

28:13

to more or less, bbc.co. UK.

28:16

We will be back next week,

28:18

actually, twice next week, you lucky

28:20

people. Thrice, if you include our

28:22

bite-sized Saturday edition on the podcast.

28:24

On Monday I am presenting a

28:26

special edition of the programme to

28:28

mark the fifth anniversary of the

28:31

UK going into lockdown. We've been

28:33

trying to work out what we

28:35

can say with any certainty about

28:37

the effect that the lockdowns had

28:39

on young people. What happened to

28:41

education levels, jobs, mental health? Listening

28:43

on Monday to find out. The

28:46

programme is broadcast at 9am on

28:48

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28:50

Until then, goodbye. More

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or less was presented by

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me, Tim Harford. The producer

28:57

was Charlotte McDonald, with Nathan

28:59

Gower, Josh McMinn and Lizzie

29:02

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29:06

mixed by Rod Farker. And

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our editor is Richard Varden.

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