§ Mr. LidingtonTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what assumptions he made about the number of asylum seekers living in south east England when he prepared his response to the Crow report. [120255]
§ Ms Beverley HughesThe Department's household projections are only one of several factors which informed the Proposed Changes to draft Regional Planning Guidance for the south east. I refer the hon. Member to my answer below—which clarifies the relationship between population projections in which assumptions about asylum seekers are made and the Department's household projections.
§ Mr. LidingtonTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what assumptions he has made in his Department's projections of future population and household formation trends about the number of asylum seekers in England. [120276]
§ Ms Beverley Hughes[holding answer 2 May 2000]: National population projections are prepared by the Government Actuary's Department and published jointly with the Office for National Statistics. A description of the assumptions in the 1996-based national population projections can be found in "National Population Projections: 1996-based" (ONS series PPG2 No. 21, published by TSO). These included a long-term asylum seeker assumption of 5,000 a year to the UK, virtually all of whom were assumed to settle in England. This assumption has subsequently been revised.
The 1996-based national population projections were an input into the Department's household projections, the latest of which is published in "Projections of Households in England to 2021", a copy of which is in the Library. No other information about asylum seekers in England was used in producing the household projections.