Read the Statistics Commission report in full

About 80 per cent of new jobs created in Britain in the past 10 years might have gone to foreign workers, according to an official report last night.

Frank Field, the Labour MP for Birkenhead, released the results of a Statistics Commission investigation after an incorrect estimate of the increase in overseas workers since 1997 by the Department for Work and Pensions.

The Department revised its figures from 800,000 foreign workers to 1.1 million in October. The Statistics Commission report concluded that, of a total increase in employment between 1997 and 2007 of 2.1 million new jobs, more than half were taken by foreign citizens. However, it added that the actual proportion of the employment increase accounted for by foreign workers ranged from just over 50 per cent to just over 80 per cent, depending on the definition of a migrant.

The 50 per cent figure was applicable if foreign citizens alone were counted. The 80 per cent figure was based on a definition by the Office for National Statistics of all those who said they were born overseas, including those who had since become British citizens.

Between 1997 and 2007 the estimated number of workers born abroad increased by 1.4 million and those born in Britain by 0.3 million. In response to a parliamentary question to Mr Field in October, Peter Hain, the Work and Pensions Secretary, stated that 800,000 new jobs since 1997 had gone to foreign citizens. Questioned further, the Government was forced to revise its figures. It emerged that out of 2.1 million new jobs created, 1.1 million were taken by foreign citizens and 1 million by British nationals.

Chris Grayling, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, said that the report had destroyed the Government’s claim of being able to offer British jobs to British workers. “Gordon Brown’s Welfare to Work policies have clearly been an abject failure and all he’s done is create British jobs for foreign workers,” he said.

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