Clegg: Govt right to hide immigration figures
Nick Clegg has insisted the Government is right not to publish its forecasts for Romanian and Bulgarian migration.
Speaking on his LBC Call Clegg radio show, the Deputy Prime Minister said he had seen official estimates for migration from the two countries, but would not reveal the figures.
"I don’t think we as a government should start banding around estimates which are, at the moment, are not very precise. By definition, they’re not very precise," he said.
It comes as a Conservative MP has said that David Cameron's mission to improve trade will fail if ministers continue to treat immigration as a problem.
Writing in the Telegraph, Gavin Barwell, who is co-chair of the think tank Migration Matters, said: "We are running the risk of sending very mixed messages because of the way in which we conduct the debate in this country about immigration and the way in which the UK Border Agency administers the system."