§ Mr. BradyTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what estimates his Department has made of net migration of inhabitants from city centres in each of the last five years. [116146]
§ Miss Melanie JohnsonThe information requested falls within the responsibility of the Director of the Office for National Statistics. I have asked him to reply.
Letter from Tim Holt to Mr. Graham Brady, dated 4 April 2000:
As Director of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I have been asked to reply to your recent question on estimated net migration from city centres.The information that you require is not available. At present it is not possible to produce annual migration estimates for small geographical areas such as city centres. Migration estimates are only available for former Family Health Service Authority areas. These are broadly consistent with shire counties, metropolitan districts and groups of London boroughs. This is because estimates of internal migration within the United Kingdom are based on the movement of NHS doctor's patients between the former Family Health Service Authorities.ONS have recently investigated the feasibility of using the postcoded information held on patient registers to better estimate migration at local level. It is possible that in the future we will be able to provide migration estimates for different geographies such as city centres.Moves for former Family Health Service Authority areas and between the individual Government Office Regions (GORs) and the rest of the United Kingdom are published in Key Population and Vital Statistics, which is available in the House of Commons Library.