Express mangles language figures and 'migrant' facts

Today's Express is up in arms about the number of migrants who are "shunning the English language". 

But it's worth taking a look at the facts of this story. 

The Express claims "4 million people living here hardly speak [English]".

Which might be a lot of people "shunning the English language", if it was true.

But it isn't.

Citing Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures, The Express says:

"More than four million migrants cannot or rarely speak English." 

But the ONS states:

"Of the eight per cent (4.2 million) of usual residents aged three years and over with a main language other than English, 79 per cent (3.3 million) could speak English very well or well."

So, in order to get its headline figure of four million who "hardly speak" English, The Express has included 3.3 million people who do in fact speak English "well or very well".

They have also decided 726,000 census respondents who said they speak "some English" belong in this "cannot or rarely speak English" category.

By definition, people who speak "some English" can speak English. They might also use what little English they speak every single day meaning it may be wrong to say they "rarely" speak English.

This means as many as 4.026 million people may be wrongly classified by The Express as being among the 4 million people who "cannot or rarely speak English".

As The Express does admit further down its article, the census found only 138,000 respondents who categorically "cannot speak English".

There is also an issue with assuming these people are all migrants.

To get its big number The Express has classed "all usual residents aged three years and over with a main language other than English" as "migrants".

Which clearly isn't true.

This group will include all British citizens who said their first language isn't English. It will also include all British citizens who said sign language is their first language.

So where does this leave us? It seems The Express's claim that '4 million migrants have shunned the English language' falls down on two important points.

Firstly, the number is out by between 3.3 million and 4 million.

Secondly, they definitely aren't all "migrants".

Comments

[Chainbear]

It's almost as if the Express can't read English :)

[Stuart]

"all usual residents aged three years and over with a main language other than English" also includes quite a few Welsh people.

I wonder if The Express will be getting lots of letters from Welsh nationalists in the morning?

[Calum Paramor]

In Wales, from what I remember, English and Welsh were conflated (meaning that Welsh and English speakers were both counted together) so they're ever so slightly less colossal b*stards than they would be otherwise. Still so, so abonimable though.