The left-wing British government has launched an appeal against a ruling ordering the release of the crime rates of migrant groups in the UK, sparking accusations that Labour is seeking to prevent the public from knowing the truth about the impacts of immigration.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is seeking to overturn a decision by the Information Commissioner requiring the government to publish crime rates by nationality between 2018 and 2024, The Telegraph reported.
This came after the Centre for Migration Control (CMC) submitted a Freedom of Information request for such data, amid a broader effort to increase transparency about the government-sponsored mass influx of foreigners into the country in recent decades.
The MoJ has argued that complying with the ruling could lead to the identification of some offenders and would represent a “disproportionate” cost to public finances. Both arguments were rejected by the Information Commissioner.
Director of Research for the Centre for Migration Control (CMC), Robert Bates, vowed to deploy “every available means” to compel the government to publish the data.
“It is clearly in the public interest for this information to be released,” he told the broadsheet. “It is astonishing that the government is going to the courts in an effort to fight against such important transparency, and raises serious questions as to what they are hiding.”
The government has previously released partial data on the nationality of sex offences, which showed that foreign nationals accounted for 14.1 per cent of convictions in 2025.
However, the information released by the government failed to include the breakdown of offences committed, such as rape, grooming, or child sexual abuse. The data also did not include migrants who had become naturalised as British citizens, therefore likely undercounting the true impact of migration on crime rates.
While the Freedom of Information request would also not reveal the crimes committed by foreign-born British citizens, campaigners argue the release of the data is necessary for the public to make a determination about the immigration policies they would support, and allow the government to tailor its immigration policies by cutting inflows from high-crime countries and bolstering immigration from low-crime nations.
Although the government has yet to provide such data, previous analysis has suggested stark disparities in crime rates among different nationalities living in Britain. According to a report last year from The Telegraph, which compared the prison rolls to 2021 census data, found that foreigners overall were 27 per cent more likely to be imprisoned than British citizens.
Certain ethnic groups were significantly more overrepresented, with Albanians having an imprisonment rate of 232.33 out of 10,000 people, compared to a rate of 14 out of 10,000 for British citizens. Other high crime rate groups included Kosovars (150), Vietnamese (148.88), Algerians (124.41), Jamaicans (110.77), Eritreans (110.7), Iraqis (104.43), and Somalis (100.37).
Conversely, some migrant groups had a lower imprisonment rate than their British counterparts, including Germans (4.68), Italians (4.96), Indians (6.24), Greeks (6.36), Americans (7.27), Sri Lankans (8.17), French (8.64), and Chinese (9.39).
Commenting on the refusal of the government to release full crime statistics, Reform UK MP Robert Jenrick said: “The cover-up continues. Successive Tory and Labour justice secretaries have refused to publish this basic information.
“A Reform government led by Nigel Farage would immediately blow the lid on what’s really happening and begin deporting these dangerous criminals.”
A Ministry of Justice spokesman denied the government is engaged in a cover-up, but said that it would not comment further amid an open legal proceeding.
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