§ Mr. Andrew TurnerTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimates he has made of the number of UK citizens who departed the UK unidentified by the international passenger survey, in each of the last five years, broken down by(a) race and (b) gender.[104897]
§ Ruth KellyI have been asked to reply.
The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician. I have asked him to reply.
Letter from Len Cook to Mr. Andrew Turner, dated 4 April 2003:
As National Statistician I have been asked to reply to your recent question on the number of UK citizens who departed from the UK but were not identified by the International Passenger Survey (IPS). (104897)The International Passenger Survey (IPS) is a continuous voluntary sample survey conducted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). It covers the principal air, sea and Channel Tunnel routes between the UK and countries outside the British Isles and currently samples approximately 0.2 per cent. of all travellers. The IPS excludes all movements of diplomats and armed forces personnel.The IPS is used as the basis for estimating migration between the UK and the rest of the world. A migrant is defined as someone whose length of stay in the destination country will be for a year or more, but this is based upon the intentions of the traveller and it is possible that these might change.For the purposes of estimating Total International Migration, estimates of emigrants from the IPS have previously been supplemented with (i) information on people migrating to the Republic of Ireland from the Quarterly Household Survey conducted by the Irish Central Statistics Office, and (ii) an estimate of the number of people who initially leave the UK for less than 12 months but subsequently decide to stay away longer. I cannot currently supply the figures you have requested because the ONS is in the process of revising estimates of Total International Migration for the past decade in the light of the results of the 2001 Census. This work includes investigation of groups of migrants not identified by the IPS and will result in revisions to the previously published series. The revisions are due for publication in late Spring 2003.