LGA calls for £250m to ease tensions over migrants

1 Nov 07
A £250m contingency fund should be created by the Treasury to help councils facing unplanned costs and potential community tensions because of poor immigration monitoring, town hall leaders have suggested.

02 November 2007

A £250m contingency fund should be created by the Treasury to help councils facing unplanned costs – and potential community tensions – because of poor immigration monitoring, town hall leaders have suggested.

The Local Government Association put forward the idea after publishing a report on November 1 revealing 15 areas of public policy where inaccurate immigration data have led to costs falling disproportionately on councils.

LGA chair Sir Simon Milton told Public Finance that he now had serious concerns over the potential 'scapegoating' of immigrants in some localities. 'When you have lots of demands for increasingly scarce resources, people tend to look for scapegoats and perceive unfairness even when that perception is wrong.'

The LGA-commissioned study, undertaken by the Institute of Community Cohesion, states that high rates of immigration into the UK have benefited the national economy. But it also warns that some councils face potential conflicts between immigrant groups unless more is done to meet the demand for scarce public resources.

'Even where specific [community cohesion] tensions have been addressed, concerns about potential tensions remain, including tensions between different migrant communities, with the host community and those arising from migrants' own concerns about poor employment practices,' the report states.

Three councils are cited as expressing such fears: Southampton, Hull & East Riding and the London Borough of Greenwich.

Other authorities warned that immigration concerns could cause conflict in areas where there has been 'little integration', despite a renewed focus on cohesion policies in town halls in recent years.

These include Rochdale which, the LGA document states, reported that 'some unskilled members of the indigenous local community feel that migrant workers are “taking our jobs”…and identified a need to develop training programmes to equip unskilled locals to compete for new jobs.'

Milton called on the Treasury to establish the £250m annual contingency fund so that councils adversely affected by inaccurate data could cover rising service costs.

'The fund would equate to 1% of total grants distributed to councils by the government and is actually quite a modest sum compared to the overall financial benefit of immigration nationally,' he said.

'With immigration we know that the impact nationally has been positive, with an extra £40bn generated for the government. But the costs are felt locally because funding is not adequately allocated to councils with heavily burdened services.'

The LGA's report followed this week's admission by Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain that at least 300,000 more immigrants are working in the UK than originally estimated. That led Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to apologise publicly for the government's failure to accurately monitor entrants in and out of the UK.

The LGA has long warned ministers about the disruptive impact of poor data compiled by the Office for National Statistics and the Home Office.

Milton's predecessor, Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, wrote to then home secretary John Reid in August 2006, warning that 'invisible populations' of immigrants, often short-term visitors to the UK, are not counted by officials.

The ONS last week estimated that at least 105,000 'short-term' immigrants visit the UK each year, but the statisticians acknowledged the figure 'may be too low'. Most financial allocations to councils do not account for short-term migration.

Milton told PF that this placed other major local public services under strain, including education, health and children's services.

Some local education authorities, such as Slough, have had to place up to 900 non-English speaking children in schools, he said. The London Borough of Hillingdon, meanwhile, spent £4.7m last year housing and protecting unaccompanied children entering the UK as asylum seekers.

Trevor Phillips, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, was due to pitch into the debate around immigration data during a speech to council chief executives in Birmingham on November 1.

Phillips was due to say: 'When our infrastructure creaks, apparently because of unexpected new arrivals, it has a collateral impact on community relations.

'[The contingency fund] would ensure that the money being generated by new migrants… finds its way back down to the local level. It will help local authorities deliver equality and fairness at precisely the time when they are coming under the most pressure.'

PFnov2007

Did you enjoy this article?

AddToAny

Top