The Government was forced to apologise today for getting its figures on immigration wrong.
Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain admitted that "roughly" 300,000 more foreign nationals are working in the UK than previously announced.
The figure had been put at 800,000 in the past 10 years - but Mr Hain has said the "ball-park" figure is more like 1.1 million.
However, the Department Of Work & Pensions has offered a detailed apology as to why it got the figures so wrong. Mr Hain has said that it all started when he tried to get the figures from each branch of the department. After being on hold for hours his patience was at "breaking point", he then spoke to "foreign-sounding "workers who gave him some of the figures, but they hung up on him before he could write them down properly.
In another key area workers supervisors were unable to fill in forms regarding immigration workers as they were unable to get the correct details from the workers due to being unable to speak their languages. The workers were unable to fill in the forms themselves.
In industry it is believed that many companies are employing double the workforce at half the cost and declaring only 50% of it on a regular basis.
"The fact is" said Mr Hain, "that we can't get the information accurately because we have employed mainly non-English speaking immigrant workers to give us the information."
