Immigration: Rural Areas

Mr. Paice
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment she has made of levels of immigration to rural communities in England of people from countries which acceded to the EU in (a) 2004 and (b) 2007.

Mr. Byrne
The Border and Immigration Agency (BIA) provides information on both nationals of countries acceding to the European Union in 2004 who have registered with the Worker Registration Scheme (WRS) and Bulgarian and Romanian nationals taking employment in the United Kingdom since those countries joined the EU in 2007. These data are published quarterly in two separate reports: the Accession Monitoring Report and Bulgarian and Romanian Accession statistics, both of which include regional and sector breakdowns.

A further breakdown of the WRS figures by local authority (based on employer’s address) is available for local authorities.

The most recent publications, relating to the last quarter of 2007, were published on 26 February 2008 and are available on the Border and Immigration website:

http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/aboutus/reports/

I will make copies available in the House Library.

The data in these publications are based on Management Information, are provisional, and may be subject to change. The data are not National Statistics.