Uncertainty about the true population of the UK has driven calls for a special census (Image: Getty)
Labour has been urged to enact an “emergency census” to identity the true number of people in the United Kingdom because “we simply don’t know who is in the country”. Champions of a census argue the most accurate data possible is needed for ministers to make the right decisions about public services.
A major revision to official statistics showed migration boosted the UK population by 944,000 between April 2022 and March 2023 – significantly higher than the earlier figure of 906,000 by June 2023. Meanwhile, net migration for last year has been revised downwards by 86,000 to 345,000.
There is also concern the last census could have been distorted by the effects of the Covid pandemic.
Gavin Rice of the Onward think tank said: “Since the end of the pandemic in 2021, more than five million people have arrived in the UK – an unprecedented figure. We know that official data is patchy, and due to illegal immigration in particular we simply don’t know who is in this country.
“Good policy needs accurate data, and an emergency census would show the country the true scale of population change over the past six years.”
Former Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe is pushing in Parliament for an emergency census.
He said: “We urgently need an emergency census – the last one was conducted in lockdown which did not lend itself to reliable data collection, and the waves of mass immigration since mean that it is entirely out of date.
“Good Government is based on good data. The Government must collect it.”
In recent days research from the Centre for Policy Studies has highlighted the “extraordinary scale of UK population change”, claiming that “one in every 25 people in the UK today has arrived in the last four years”.
Karl Williams, the think tank’s director of research, said in his paper that an emergency census would “restore trust in the population data and make for better, more evidence-based policy,” warning: “As it is, we still only have a relatively hazy picture of this extraordinary demographic phenomenon.”
There are also calls for a real-time population register (Image: Getty)
Alp Mehmet of Migration Watch said: “An emergency census, conducted five years after the last one, would be a good idea.”
But he also pushed for a new “population register”.
“Such a system would provide real-time access to essential demographic data and avoid the eye-watering costs associated with traditional censuses,” he said.
The Office for National Statistics has no plans for an emergency census and is preparing to stage the next one in 2031.
