§ Mr. Wheelerasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for the most recent convenient 12 month period, how many persons are known to have permanently emigrated from the United Kingdom; and how many immigrants have been received in the United Kingdom on permanent settlement.
§ Mr. RaisonThe estimates of immigration and emigration published by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys are based on the definition of an immigrant as one who, having resided abroad for at least one year, intends to spend a year or more in the United Kingdom, and vice versa for an emigrant. Their estimates for 1981 were 153,000 immigrants and 233,000 emigrants. Not all of these will have been subject to control under the Immigration Act 1971. The statistics of immigration control show that in 1981 58,000 people who were subject to this control were accepted for settlement in the United Kingdom. The two sets of figures are not comparable because of differences in their coverage, timing, and so on.
(See "Immigration statistics: sources and definitions" Occasional paper 15, OPCS, 1979.)