2012-03-02
Tom Watson MP, former News of the World editor Alex Marunchak, and the murder of Daniel Morgan
Anatomy of a Denial
Radio Four has recently been running a (at times moving, at times
irritating) series on people who were intending to use the leap day of 2012
February 29 to do something special. Tom Watson MP decided to use this day (and
parliamentary privilege) to relate some of the background to a brutal murder, the police corruption that has thus far thwarted any attempts to bring the killer/s to justice, and the curious role of News International in this sorry tale.
An important role in this story is played by an Alex Marunchak, former chief crime reporter for the News of the World and later the paper’s Irish editor, and Tom Watson made (or reported) a number of accusations against this journalist.
Tom Watson:
The main conduit [for information obtained through Rees and Fillery’s corrupted contacts] at News International was Alex Marunchak, chief crime reporter for the News of the World and later the paper’s Irish editor. I want to focus the Minister’s attention on Marunchak in particular. Rees and Marunchak had a relationship that was so close that they both registered companies at the same address in Thornton Heath. Abbeycover, established by Rees and his colleague from News International, Greg Miskiw, was registered at the same address as Southern Investigations, run by Rees and Fillery. Rees’s confirmed links with Marunchak take the murder of Daniel Morgan to a new level.
It is important to remember that, in the days before the murder, Daniel’s family believe that he was on the verge of exposing huge police corruption. That was confirmed by Brian Madagan, Daniel’s former employer, in a statement in May 1987, in which he said that he believed Daniel was about to sell a story to a newspaper. In a second, later statement, Madagan said he believed that paper to be the News of the World and the contact to be Alex Marunchak who, until recently, still worked for the paper. BBC Radio 4’s “Report” programme also confirmed that it has seen evidence suggesting that, a week before the murder, Daniel was about to take a story exposing police corruption to Mr Marunchak and was promised a payment of £40,000. We also know, from the investigative reporting of Nick Davies at The Guardian that Southern Investigations paid the debts of Alex Marunchak.
As part of the third failed investigation, Operation Nigeria was launched. It included the surveillance of Southern Investigations between May and September 1999 and was run by the Metropolitan police’s anti-corruption squad, CIB3. It placed a bug in the offices of Southern Investigations that yielded evidence that convicted Rees for a serious and unrelated crime. Police surveillance shows frequent contact between Rees and Marunchak. I understand that the tapes made by the recording by the bug have not all been transcribed; if they were, they would yield more collusion, perhaps criminal in nature, between News International and Jonathan Rees. I hope the Minister will ask the police if that process is under way.
When Rees came out of jail, he was re-hired by the News of the World, then edited by Andy Coulson. Rees also founded a company called Pure Energy, in which Marunchak was involved. The police hold evidence to suggest that Rees discussed the use of Trojan devices with his associate, Sid Fillery. He was an associate of Philip Campbell Smith, who received a custodial sentence on Monday for a crime related to blagging. Campbell Smith is a former Army intelligence officer. I will say no more on Campbell Smith, because I do not want to prejudice the Operation Tuleta inquiry. However, I hope that I have demonstrated to the Minister a close association between Rees and Marunchak.
This is why I think that the Metropolitan police cannot be used in any further investigations: yesterday, the Leveson inquiry heard a startling revelation that Alex Marunchak — a close business associate of Jonathan Rees, then the prime suspect in a murder case — chose to put DCI David Cook and his family under close covert surveillance. The person who was investigating a murder was put under close surveillance by a close business associate of the man he was investigating. That was raised with Rebekah Brooks in 2002, the then editor of the News of the World. I would like the Minister to imagine what his response would have been to that information. A journalist employee tried to undermine the murder investigation of his close associate. Rupert Murdoch claims that News International takes a zero-tolerance approach to wrongdoing. However, far from launching a wide-scale inquiry to investigate wrongdoing, Rebekah Brooks promoted Alex Marunchak to the editor’s job at the News of the World in Ireland.
[…..]
It gets worse. I would like the Minster to request to see all the intelligence reports submitted about Alex Marunchak. I believe the Met is sitting on an intelligence report from late 2002 that claims a police contact overheard Marunchak claim he was paying the relatives of police officers in Cambridgeshire for information about the Soham murders. As far as we know, those allegations have not been investigated. I do not know whether the intelligence reports are accurate, but I do know that Alex Marunchak was involved in writing stories about how the Manchester United tops of those young girls were found. I also believe that at least one of the Soham parents appears in the evidence file of Glenn Mulcaire. The Met police failed to investigate both leads when reported in 2002 and 2006. I think that Rupert Murdoch owes the Morgan family an apology, and I do not think that he has made his last apology to the grieving parents of murdered children.Alex Marunchak has just responded to these allegations.
Alex Marunchak
Mercifully I didn’t see Tom Watson’s performance but regret it came slightly too late for him to be an also-ran at the Oscar ceremony.
It astonishes me an MP can abuse parliamentary privilege and waste everybody’s time by peddling untruths in this way.
I have never met Watson, nor talked or communicated with him in any way.
Perhaps I should make this clear at the outset – lest he be found crucified on a hill overlooking Jerusalem and I am held, in some way, to be responsible.
It is noteworthy that Maranchak’s opening remarks are ad
hominem rather than ad argumentum and that Maranchak begins by denying a “straw
man” – the unalleged “he met Watson” and “he communicated with Watson”.
Watson’s comments about my professional dealings with murder victim Daniel Morgan are absolutely untrue.
I do not doubt that Morgan’s family now believe he was on the verge of exposing police corruption before he died.
If that was indeed a motive for his death – then I know nothing about it.
The reason is that I never heard of Daniel Morgan or Southern Investigations until after his murder.
He never phoned me, contacted or met me, neither directly nor through a third party, by telephone or letter or by any other method.
Nor did he leave graffiti sprayed on walls for me to spot on the way to work which asked me to contact him.
But, I admit, for all I know, he may even have employed someone claiming to have ESP powers to contact me.
Sadly, for Mr Watson, I did not receive any ESP messages either.
Perhaps he should look into this as the basis for his next parliamentary diatribe on the topic?
I was told to cover the Morgan murder story as the News of the World’s crime reporter.Then news editor Bob Warren told me: “Find out who this man is for a start. We’ve never heard of him.”
Neither I, nor anyone else at the News of the World, offered Morgan £40,000 for his story.
Nor did we offer £100,000.
In fact we never knew he even existed prior to his murder.
More ad hominem attacks on Tom Watson, though the man who
made this particular allegation is Brian Madigan. Maranchak nevertheless offers
two categorical denials here: that he had never heard of Daniel Morgan until
after the 1987 murder and that he had never heard of or Southern Investigations
until after the murder. I rather think these denials (especially the second)
should be checked.
I was promoted to associate editor of the News of the World in 1997 after 10 years on the News of the World newsdesk.
My primary job was to edit the Irish News of the World in Dublin.
[…]
I never worked on stories about the Soham murders [which happened in 2002], never wrote copy, nor interviewed anyone.
I did not pay any relatives of police officers involved in the Soham murders.
Instead, I carried on with the task of editing the Irish News of the World and commuted between Dublin and London.
Watson said in parliament he had been told a police informant claimed he overheard me boasting I had paid relatives of police officers in Cambridgeshire for information about the Soham murders. He also claimed I had written Soham stories. For the avoidance of any doubt - what Watson said is completely untrue.
In the unlikely event an experienced Fleet Street hack like myself, based in Dublin, were paying relatives of police officers in Cambridgeshire, would he be stupid enough to blurt it out in front of strangers, one of whom was a police informer? Er, no. I don’t think so.
The simple fact is that I was not involved in the Soham story. It was an English story run by the London newsdesk. I was in charge of the Irish News of the World and had no role whatsoever in the Soham story.
Another categorical denial here: that Maranchak had “no role
whatsoever in the Soham story”. The Telegraph says that there is a News of the
World article about the case which had Mr Marunchak’s byline on it.
Again, this ought to be checkable. There is also an appeal to the argument from
personal incredulity: “would [I] be stupid enough to blurt it out in front of
strangers?”. A problem here is that all our thresholds for incredulity have
been raised considerably by the revelations coming out on a daily basis.
I received information from a source that then minor BBC Crimewatch personality Jacqui Hames was having an affair with a senior officer who was appearing on her TV show.
For the avoidance of doubt, I did nothing to check this, because it was of no interest to me.
I did not look at cuttings, because I had no time, and I was editing the Irish News of the World. But I passed the tittle-tattle on to the London newsdesk as a bit of gossip, which had been passed on to me, and left it to them to deal with as they saw fit.
I do not know to this day what checks they carried out, if any at all, or indeed if they did anything about the information. Nor did I ask them to keep me posted with progress or developments. End of story.
But I do know that I did nothing more than have a 30 second conversation passing on the rumour to the London newsdesk and that was the end of my involvement.
This would appear to be a refutation of the claim that Marunchak
put DCI David Cook and his family under surveillance though it is noteworthy that
there is no explicit denial of this core allegation.
As part of my master-plan to
escape Fleet Street and become a multi-millionaire I registered a limited
company at Companies House in London through a chartered accountant. I believe
he registered numerous companies at the same address which is the office from
which he worked and rented. My name and home address was readily available from
Companies House records.
The master plan was to import
vodka into Britain and become so incredibly wealthy I could afford to stick two
fingers up at Fleet Street. Sadly, the best laid plans of mice and men oft go
awry, and the vodka company never traded. Not once. It did not take one single
penny, nor import a single drop of vodka, let alone a whole bottle-full.
Instead, I was so busy carrying
out my work for the paper I never had time to turn my attention to anything
else. After a couple of years on the shelf and not trading I had the firm wound
up after receiving threatening letters from Companies House for not filing
accounts – of which there were none to file.
Now the reference to importing alcohol is interesting because
(as reported here)
one "Barry Beardall" (who was employed by the Sunday Times to trick staff at a
law firm into revealing details from Gordon Brown's personal file, who met Jonathan
Rees in prison, and who became a partner with Rees in a company that employed Marunchak
as a consultant) was (when he met Rees) serving six and a half years for a
£7 million alcohol smuggling operation. Of course this may be pure coincidence,
but it is a coincidence that should perhaps be set alongside the other
coincidence reported here: that Marunchak’s chartered accountant registered Marunchak’s
firm at the same address as Jonathan Rees’s Southern Investigations firm.
I have a signed, witnessed, dated statement of truth from the then bursar of the school attended by my sons that no one except myself ever paid school fees. These were gratefully received because they were never paid on time or in full.
Eventually these were finally settle in total after I had left the employ of the News of the World and only after the threat of legal action against me and two years after my youngest son finished university. That’s five years after he left the school.
But should anyone be interested, then I am happy to give tips to anyone interested in knowing how I managed to achieve this incredible feat and avoid paying school fees for so long. Ditto for my credit cards.
My response to Watson’s childish and infantile accusations, which have no basis in fact whatsoever, have been repeated ad infinitum whenever he mischievously makes them.But he persists in doing so, for whatever motives he has conjured up for himself. After all, he didn’t get to where he is on the Labour back benches by being stupid.
More ad hominem attacks on Tom Watson though the source of
these financial allegations is actually Guardian reporter Nick Davis. One assumes that a police trawl of Mr Marunchak’s bank accounts might shed some light here.
Of course, what is often the most interesting is not what
people accused of wrong-doing deny, but what they don’t deny.
What Marunchak does not deny (in this most recent set of denials)
is that he knew (personally) and employed (as a source for information) and was
a business partner of Jonathon Rees
It is interesting to contrast the recent denials with what he said back in March 2011:
Panorama: In 2006, whilst you were employed as a senior executive editor at the News of the World, you commissioned further research from Jonathan Rees (who had previously run “Southern Investigations”), notwithstanding the fact that he had recently been released from a seven-year prison sentence following his conviction for a serious criminal offence.
Marunchak: This is untrue. Information offered and brought in by sources of their own volition is not the same thing as being commissioned to obtain it in the first place. The conviction and sentence to which you refer, as I understand it, is currently being examined by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which was set up by the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice to assess if convictions should be referred to the Court of Appeal for reconsideration on the grounds the original conviction was unsafe.
Here Marunchak seems to be saying that though he received (and presumably paid for) information from Rees, he did not ask Rees for information and that Rees may,
in any case, have not been guilty of the offence for which he was imprisoned. I
think it is noteworthy that Marunchak makes no attempt to repeat these justifications
in his more recent pronouncements.
So, to summarize, there is no new evidence here or anything
that proves that Marunchak is actually guilty of any criminal wrongdoing, but
there is a great deal to suggest that the authorities should now subject Marunchak’s account to
a great deal more detailed scrutiny than they have so far.
Forget #horsegate; forget hacking celebrities’ phones, someone
has got away with murder here and the allegations need to be fully and rigorously investigated.
Meanwhile, Tom Watson MP is to be commended for his role in bringing this matter to public attention.
2012-02-16
In Defence of Militant Atheism
The case for secularism is unanswerable. The alternatives are:
- discrimination in favour of (and maintenance of the privileges of) a particular religion regardless of how many people continue to believe it – the untenable status quo;
- discrimination against minority faiths by those in the majority – who might, in some places or given time, be Muslims, Scientologists, or (god forbid) atheists; or
- or equal rights for all supernatural beliefs – a route to chaos.
Atheists should remember that the goal is to clear public space of belief, not private space.I disagree. Even religion in the private sphere is highly malevolent. It is difficult to generalize about religions. For example, according to your specific religion, you may believe in zero, one, or many deities. But certain themes do seem to recur:
- The devaluing of real human life by contrast with an afterlife (or even an endless succession of lives).
- The devaluing of real flesh and blood human beings by contrast with some kind of immaterial human essence.
- Neuroses about sex in general and the female sex in particular.
- Acceptance that certain things are true just because somebody once said they were true or because a certain community say they are true.
- Prejudice towards those who adhere to the “wrong” religion.
- Rejection of moral discourse. [see here for the point being made]
2012-02-07
If Paul Chambers’s conviction is allowed to stand, what should we not do in future?
If I read in the newspaper that a "Paul Chambers" has been convicted for (say) using a hand-held mobile while driving and I wish to avoid a similar fate I can draw the inference that, if driving, I had better not use my mobile (at least without a “hands-free” kit) or, conversely, that if I am using a hand-held mobile, I had better not drive.
In January 2010, his travel plans frustrated by snow, Paul Chambers posted the following piece of hyperbole on Twitter:
"Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!"
and was arrested by anti-terrorist police – so alarmed that they waited a couple of weeks before bothering to take any action. [ref]
At his subsequent (original) trial on 2010 May 10 Paul was convicted of "sending a public electronic message that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character contrary to the Communications Act 2003"[ref]. This conviction was upheld at appeal on 2010 November 11 [ref].
Paul goes to the high court today (2012-02-08) to try and overturn the previous two judgments [ref].
But let’s assume Paul loses (again). What inferences can I draw? What should I, henceforth, not do if I wish to avoid a criminal prosecution and avoid losing my job and becoming unemployable?
Perhaps (if there is any doubt about the content of what I wish to impart) I should avoid ringing up airports or sending them emails? But Paul did not do either of these things. He posted on “Twitter” (essentially a website which anyone can view). Paul did not even “mention” Robin Hood Airport (using @RobinHoodAirport or whatever their “twitter name” is – if indeed they have one). But apparently this still constitutes “sending a public electronic message”. So I suppose (subject to an appraisal of what I wish to say) I must never submit anything to the internet or the phone networks or radio networks.
So that part of the equation is clear enough. When it comes to modern technology, there is apparently no distinction in law between sending a message to someone and simply saying or writing something. This seems a bit different from the days when there was all the difference in the world between (say) sending someone a letter and (say) writing something in a newspaper.
But now comes the tricky bit. How — assuming I do not wish to eschew all use of telephony, radio, or internet (and yet still wish to avoid Paul’s fate) — do I censor my productions? As we have learned, it is not enough that I don’t intend menace (or indecency or obscenity). (If Paul had intended to cause anyone to believe there was a threat to the airport, he would have been quite rightly charged under the relevant legislation rather than under the 2003 Communications Act.) Nor does the fact that nobody reading or hearing my thoughts felt any menace (or offence) help. A public electronic message can apparently be menacing per se [ref].
So how do I avoid writing or saying something that is “menacing per se” — menacing by or in itself? What does this mean? Fortunately the appeal court provided some guidance here and considered the plight of an imaginary couple travelling from Robin Hood Airport (even though the airport was closed at the time of the “threat”) who had happened upon the tweet in question [ref]. Now leaving aside the implausibility of constructing any sort of coherent narrative in which a couple begin to feel concerned about their travel plans as a result of consulting Twitter, the legal implications would seem to be clear enough: If some imaginary context can be constructed in which something I have said or written might be considered menacing (no matter how far removed this context might be from the actual context of my remarks) them my remarks are menacing.
So can I tweet “I’ll throttle my son if he doesn’t tidy his bedroom”? After all some people (sadly) do strangle their children and there could be a context in which someone might think such a remark to be menacing.
Can I tweet “My local council need a bomb under them”? Again, some people do plant bombs and there could be a context in which someone might think such a remark to be menacing.
Can I even tweet “I’ll be there in five minutes”? After all, there might be someone out there who has been threatened with violence by someone with a similar name to mine and that potential victim might read my tweet and feel menaced.
I have no idea what the answers are to such questions.
I am an IT consultant with a PhD and two first degrees and I have absolutely no idea whatsoever about what I should not do in future in order to avoid being prosecuted for sending a public electronic message that is of a menacing character contrary to the Communications Act 2003.
I fully accept that ignorance of the law can never be an excuse for breaking the law.
I refuse to accept that ignorance of the law should be a necessary consequence of the law.
[An earlier blog post of mine related to this topic]
[A template for a letter to your MP about this case]
Postscript: Having tossed and turned all night in bed thinking about this, a free RT for anyone who can see a way out of this quasi-syllogism:
All tweets are messages
Some messages are menacing per se
"Menacing per se" means "it is possible to imagine a context in which someone might feel menace if they read the text in question"
It is always possible to imagine a context in which someone might feel menace if they read any item of text
Ergo
All tweets are menacing
2011-11-16
Fingerprints on Trial
Science, pseudoscience, and the curious case of Shirley Mckie
Next month, a “Public Judicial Inquiry” - announced by Kenny MacAskill MSP, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, in the Scottish Parliament on 14 March 2008 – into the case of H.M Advocate v McKie will finally report its findings. (ref)
This report (about a case which seems to have faded into media obscurity) may have profound implications for legal systems (north and south of the border if not worldwide) and potentially for (a topic very much in the news) border control.
It all began back in 1997 when, a police woman, Shirley Mckie, was arrested and charged with perjury over a (left thumb) fingerprint – identified as hers by four experts from the Scottish Criminal Records Office (SCRO) – found on a right door jamb inside a house where a police team were investigating the vicious murder of one Marion Ross in Kilmarnock, Scotland.
The authorities insisted that Shirley must have been present at the crime scene at some stage during the investigation and was now lying about it. She insisted she had never entered the house.
In the end, Shirley Mckie was acquitted of perjury (though the case did go to trial) and (in separate developments) David Asbury – the man jailed for Marion Ross’s murder, also on the basis of a disputed fingerprint[1] – was exonerated and freed from jail.
You can read Shirley Mckie’s version of events here.
Now if the four experts at the SCRO had simply admitted they had made a mistake, that would have been the end of the matter. In fact, they stuck to their guns and have been supported by a number of outside experts. Meanwhile, many more experts – including several international experts - have supported Shirley Mckie and insisted that the fingerprints in question were not hers or Marion Ross’s.
The balance of findings of various court cases and inquiries thus far has tended to support the Mckie camp, but the fact that a number of profound questions remain open and are still disputed by different experts has led to the current Public Judicial Inquiry. The evidence presented to that inquiry is available online and, probably most interestingly, this evidence includes that of fingerprint expert Peter Swann – who was originally consulted by the Mckie family but who is now very much in the opposing camp and who still insists to this day that the identifications of Shirley Mckie's and Marion Ross's prints were unequivocally correct.
I have no idea what the findings of the Judicial Inquiry will be but, whatever they are, profound questions will be raised about the use of fingerprinting.
Let me say at the outset that I know nothing (other than what I have picked up in the course of reading about this case) about the science of finger printing. I do, however, know quite a lot about scientific methodology in general.
The Professor of Logic and Scientific Method Sir Karl Popper is often quoted (and often misunderstood) both by defenders of the “scientific method” (something harder to define than many scientist admit or realize) and by defenders of all sorts of pseudo-scientific nonsense. What is less often pointed out is that many of Popper’s ideas have been found wanting, but one of his insights stands up rather well. Popper realized that one of the key things that distinguishes true science from pseudo-science is that pseudo-scientists look (by and large) only for verification of their theories. True scientists test their theories by looking for falsification.
To give a simple example: it is very easy for an astrologer to go out and find 16 (or more) people born under the sign of Capricorn who are extremely capricious (or whatever Capricorns are supposed to be). The true scientist, however, looks to see if there are any Capricorns who are un-capricious. The finding of just one such person falsifies the astrologer’s claim – regardless of how many people the astrologer has lined up in support of his claim.
Of course claims like this are more often expressed in probabilistic terms: “Capricorns are more likely to be capricious”. The same basic principles apply however. The true scientist starts counting un-capricious Capricorns and capricious non-Capricorns and performs a statistical analysis. The astrologer simply goes on saying: “look at all these people who are Capricorns and who are extremely capricious”.
So what has all this got to do with finger printing? At the time of the original events, the website of the SCRO used to boast that “in order to comply with the existing standard in Scotland” they insisted on identifying sixteen characteristics, in sequence and agreement, before concluding that a match had been found (unfortunately I have no cache of this site but I assume that the exact wording will be available somewhere in the inquiry evidence).
I should be interested to know how widely this “standard” is (or was) used in the world at large – my understanding is that the former SCRO (now, I understand, part of the Scottish Police Services Authority Forensic Service) now use a “non-numeric” standard.
The potential fallacy implicit in the “sixteen points in agreement” approach (to anyone who has read Popper) is plain to see. Let us assume (as fingerprint scientist claim) that every fingerprint in the world really is unique (an un-testable hypothesis, but one that there are good reasons for accepting). It does not follow at all from this that every fingerprint in the world is unique with respect to sixteen (or however many) carefully selected characteristics. After all, I am pretty confident that (just considering the topology) I could find at least sixteen “points of agreement” between the London and Paris underground maps if I set my mind to it.
No matter how many points of agreement there are between two fingerprints – 16, 45, or 145 – logically speaking, one single point of disagreement clinches the matter: the two prints are not the same.
Of course, in the real world, things are never quite so clear cut. Points of agreement and disagreement will be a matter of judgment by experts - often working with less than perfect images – and several points of disagreement may have to be found to really clinch the matter. But the basic principle holds: Any true scientist comparing finger prints will look not just for points that confirm his hypothesis that two prints are the same, but for any points that falsify that hypothesis.
So does this mean that fingerprinting is or was or often is a pseudoscience? I am really not qualified to say – though I can think of research programmes that could clinch the matter and I shall certainly read the coming report with a great deal of interest.
Two alternative conclusions seem hard to avoid however:
either
1) UK fingerprinting was (and possibly still is) riddled with incompetent and/or dishonest and/or deluded “experts”.
or
2) Fingerprinting really is not a true science and different “experts” will honestly reach different judgments when presented with the same evidence.
Again, I have no idea which of these conclusions is correct (perhaps a bit of both?) but I would find either of them profoundly disconcerting.
[1] In this case, the print (on a tin in David Asbury's possession) was identified - by the SCRO and later by Peter Swann - as belonging to the murder victim Marion Ross.
Next month, a “Public Judicial Inquiry” - announced by Kenny MacAskill MSP, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, in the Scottish Parliament on 14 March 2008 – into the case of H.M Advocate v McKie will finally report its findings. (ref)
This report (about a case which seems to have faded into media obscurity) may have profound implications for legal systems (north and south of the border if not worldwide) and potentially for (a topic very much in the news) border control.
It all began back in 1997 when, a police woman, Shirley Mckie, was arrested and charged with perjury over a (left thumb) fingerprint – identified as hers by four experts from the Scottish Criminal Records Office (SCRO) – found on a right door jamb inside a house where a police team were investigating the vicious murder of one Marion Ross in Kilmarnock, Scotland.
The authorities insisted that Shirley must have been present at the crime scene at some stage during the investigation and was now lying about it. She insisted she had never entered the house.
In the end, Shirley Mckie was acquitted of perjury (though the case did go to trial) and (in separate developments) David Asbury – the man jailed for Marion Ross’s murder, also on the basis of a disputed fingerprint[1] – was exonerated and freed from jail.
You can read Shirley Mckie’s version of events here.
Now if the four experts at the SCRO had simply admitted they had made a mistake, that would have been the end of the matter. In fact, they stuck to their guns and have been supported by a number of outside experts. Meanwhile, many more experts – including several international experts - have supported Shirley Mckie and insisted that the fingerprints in question were not hers or Marion Ross’s.
The balance of findings of various court cases and inquiries thus far has tended to support the Mckie camp, but the fact that a number of profound questions remain open and are still disputed by different experts has led to the current Public Judicial Inquiry. The evidence presented to that inquiry is available online and, probably most interestingly, this evidence includes that of fingerprint expert Peter Swann – who was originally consulted by the Mckie family but who is now very much in the opposing camp and who still insists to this day that the identifications of Shirley Mckie's and Marion Ross's prints were unequivocally correct.
I have no idea what the findings of the Judicial Inquiry will be but, whatever they are, profound questions will be raised about the use of fingerprinting.
Let me say at the outset that I know nothing (other than what I have picked up in the course of reading about this case) about the science of finger printing. I do, however, know quite a lot about scientific methodology in general.
The Professor of Logic and Scientific Method Sir Karl Popper is often quoted (and often misunderstood) both by defenders of the “scientific method” (something harder to define than many scientist admit or realize) and by defenders of all sorts of pseudo-scientific nonsense. What is less often pointed out is that many of Popper’s ideas have been found wanting, but one of his insights stands up rather well. Popper realized that one of the key things that distinguishes true science from pseudo-science is that pseudo-scientists look (by and large) only for verification of their theories. True scientists test their theories by looking for falsification.
To give a simple example: it is very easy for an astrologer to go out and find 16 (or more) people born under the sign of Capricorn who are extremely capricious (or whatever Capricorns are supposed to be). The true scientist, however, looks to see if there are any Capricorns who are un-capricious. The finding of just one such person falsifies the astrologer’s claim – regardless of how many people the astrologer has lined up in support of his claim.
Of course claims like this are more often expressed in probabilistic terms: “Capricorns are more likely to be capricious”. The same basic principles apply however. The true scientist starts counting un-capricious Capricorns and capricious non-Capricorns and performs a statistical analysis. The astrologer simply goes on saying: “look at all these people who are Capricorns and who are extremely capricious”.
So what has all this got to do with finger printing? At the time of the original events, the website of the SCRO used to boast that “in order to comply with the existing standard in Scotland” they insisted on identifying sixteen characteristics, in sequence and agreement, before concluding that a match had been found (unfortunately I have no cache of this site but I assume that the exact wording will be available somewhere in the inquiry evidence).
I should be interested to know how widely this “standard” is (or was) used in the world at large – my understanding is that the former SCRO (now, I understand, part of the Scottish Police Services Authority Forensic Service) now use a “non-numeric” standard.
The potential fallacy implicit in the “sixteen points in agreement” approach (to anyone who has read Popper) is plain to see. Let us assume (as fingerprint scientist claim) that every fingerprint in the world really is unique (an un-testable hypothesis, but one that there are good reasons for accepting). It does not follow at all from this that every fingerprint in the world is unique with respect to sixteen (or however many) carefully selected characteristics. After all, I am pretty confident that (just considering the topology) I could find at least sixteen “points of agreement” between the London and Paris underground maps if I set my mind to it.
No matter how many points of agreement there are between two fingerprints – 16, 45, or 145 – logically speaking, one single point of disagreement clinches the matter: the two prints are not the same.
Of course, in the real world, things are never quite so clear cut. Points of agreement and disagreement will be a matter of judgment by experts - often working with less than perfect images – and several points of disagreement may have to be found to really clinch the matter. But the basic principle holds: Any true scientist comparing finger prints will look not just for points that confirm his hypothesis that two prints are the same, but for any points that falsify that hypothesis.
So does this mean that fingerprinting is or was or often is a pseudoscience? I am really not qualified to say – though I can think of research programmes that could clinch the matter and I shall certainly read the coming report with a great deal of interest.
Two alternative conclusions seem hard to avoid however:
either
1) UK fingerprinting was (and possibly still is) riddled with incompetent and/or dishonest and/or deluded “experts”.
or
2) Fingerprinting really is not a true science and different “experts” will honestly reach different judgments when presented with the same evidence.
Again, I have no idea which of these conclusions is correct (perhaps a bit of both?) but I would find either of them profoundly disconcerting.
[1] In this case, the print (on a tin in David Asbury's possession) was identified - by the SCRO and later by Peter Swann - as belonging to the murder victim Marion Ross.
POSTSCRIPT
The report has been published:
summary
full report
The Chairman, Sir Anthony Campbell, would seem to have come down very firmly in support of suggestion "2" above: "Fingerprinting really is not a true science and different 'experts' will honestly reach different judgments when presented with the same evidence."
2011-10-16
Why there is no simple relationship between immigration and the rate of unemployment
Background to this post
This post arises from an ongoing Twitter conversation with a rather unpleasant tweeter who was trolling @DAaronovitch on the subject of immigrants causing unemployment and who seems to have shifted his attentions to me. I’m not sure this particular individual is amenable to rational persuasion – his tweets are sprinkled with insults – but the position he seems to hold – that jobs in a particular country are a bit like spaces in a car park – is common enough, and I think is worth challenging in the hope that some people may revise their opinions.
Full Employment
First of all a definition: "full employment" does not, as some people assume, mean that everyone has a job. This terminology is used to describe a state of affairs where the number of vacancies is on a par with the number of unemployed. Of course neither the number of unemployed nor the number of vacancies are things that can be measured particularly accurately, but it was pretty clear that during the Thatcher years - when we had about three million officially unemployed and about a hundred thousand official vacancies - that we did not have full employment. During the 1960s and again for a time in the 1990s we did.
So why do we still have any unemployment during periods of full employment?
Well there are essentially two forces at work here: "frictional" unemployment and "structural" unemployment.
Frictional unemployment occurs simply because the world of work is fluid and dynamic. Jobs are being destroyed and created all the time and people leave jobs and begin new ones. At any one moment in a country of sixty million or so, there are, at any one moment, certain to be significant numbers of people "between jobs" - even if everyone concerned is destined to begin a new job in the near future.
Structural unemployment is a more serious problem. This occurs when vacancies require skills that are in short supply or workers who are in short supply in the area of the country where they are needed. Thus, even during full employment, you may have (say) lots of unemployed bricklayers in the North alongside a shortage of hair stylists in the South.
What can we do about structural and frictional unemployment?
Well frictional unemployment is not necessarily such a bad thing. It provides a pool of workers who can be recruited quickly and contributes to a certain degree of fluidity and flexibility in the labour market, but, to the extent it is a problem, efficient dissemination of information is the key. Structural unemployment can be addressed - though not always successfully - by retraining and help in relocating. Such measures cannot, however, address the underlying problem during periods of less than full employment - a point that often seems lost on politicians and journalists:
Fallacy #1: The problem of unemployment can be solved by education or training
During the abovementioned Thatcher years I remember regularly shouting abuse at my wireless set as commentators repeatedly advanced the argument that, in a situation where there were about three million officially unemployed and a hundred thousand official vacancies, those with the best qualifications and the best interview skills were the most likely to get any jobs that were going (that bit’s true so far) therefore (this is where the reasoning went wrong) all we had to do was train everyone to be good at interviews and to raise educational standards and everyone would get a job. The fallacy behind this argument is so obvious that there does not seem to be any need to point it out, but I still hear versions of it repeated even to this day.
So why don't we always have full employment?
The key fact here is that employees, as well as being suppliers of labour, are consumers of goods and services. Ignoring the effect of imports and exports (or, alternatively, assuming that there is an equal balance of imports and exports) if the demand for goods and services from the population as a whole is roughly equal to the ability of the entire workforce to produce those goods and services we will have full employment; if the demand for goods and services from the population as a whole is greater than the ability of the entire workforce to produce those goods and services we will have an overall shortage of labour; and if the demand for goods and services from the population as a whole is lower than the ability of the entire workforce to produce those goods and services we will have net unemployment - ie unemployment that would still be there even if we could fill every vacancy.
So why don’t we always have enough demand for labour
This is the point where those of different political persuasions tend to part company. It could be argued (and indeed I should argue) that high unemployment was a deliberate policy for a while under Margaret Thatcher since this policy tipped the balance of power against working people and (especially) their trade unions. But let’s assume most governments of whatever political persuasion will usually seek to maximize employment. Left wingers tend to argue that the problem is that pay is too low. “Increase pay” they argue “and demand for labour will increase”. Right wingers tend to argue that the problem is that pay is too high. “Decrease pay, and thus the cost of labour,” they argue “and demand for labour will increase”.
I don’t wish to enter into that debate here, but given what has been said thus far, you can see where both sides are “coming from”.
But what about immigration?
We need to start using some figures now, but I’m going to make up some nice round numbers – it’s the principle I want to get across, not the real UK numbers. What I present here is a series of thought experiments:
Let’s assume there’s a country, not unlike the UK, with 60 million in habitants and a workforce (ie all the people in work plus all the people seeking work) of 20 million.
Immigration to a country with full employment and no unemployment and no vacancies
If we assume that all 20 million of the workforce are in paid employment, we can easily calculate that each inhabitant of this country generates an average demand (to produce the goods and services he/she consumes) of 20m/60m = ⅓ of a worker.
Or, to put it the other way around, each worker produces (on average) goods and services for 60m/20m = 3 consumers.
Now let’s assume that a million people extra people arrive from a country (not unlike, say Poland) and let us further assume (for the moment) that those people have similar profile of demand for goods and services as the “indigenous” population and a similar profile of working ability – ie a third of them are of working age and intend to seek work in the UK; the rest are children or other dependents.
What would happen?
The population of our imaginary country would increase to 61 million. These 61 million people would require the services of 20 and ⅓ million workers. The demand for labour would therefore increase to 20 and ⅓ million and ⅓ million extra jobs would be created to supply the new demand. This would soak up the ⅓ million immigrants who were looking for work and there would be once again full employment and 0% unemployment.
Immigration to a country with unemployment and no vacancies
So let’s now consider what happens if we don’t have 100% on the workforce employed. Let’s assume that 18 million of the workforce are in paid employment and 2 million (ie 10%) are unemployed.
Again we can calculate that each inhabitant of this country generates an average demand for 18m/60m = 0.3 of a worker or that each worker is produces (on average) goods and services for 60m/18m = 3 and ⅓ consumers.
Now again let’s assume that a million extra people arrive with a similar profile of demand for goods and services and jobs. The Population of our imaginary country will increase to 61 million. These 61 million people will require the services of 18.3 million workers.
Unfortunately, since 20333333 workers are now chasing 18300000 million jobs, there will not be quite enough jobs created this time round to soak up all the new immigrant workers. Unemployment will rise (in absolute terms) by 33333, the unemployment rate will, however, remain at 100x2033333/20333333 = 10% - just as it was before the immigrants arrived.
Immigration to a country with unemployment and no vacancies where the demand profile of the immigrants does not match the demand profile of the host country
A reasonable objection to the thought experiments presented so far would be to point out that the demand for goods and services among the new immigrants may be lower than that in the host community (the new immigrants may, for example, save more or send money back home) and the demand for jobs among the new immigrants may be higher than that in the host community (the new immigrants may, for example, have a significantly higher proportion of people of working age).
So what happens to the figures when we consider such factors?
Again for simplicity, let’s consider what happens if a typical immigrant consumes only half what a typical non-migrant consumes and is twice as likely to be looking for work (and all other assumptions remain the same as in the previous example).
So in this highly improbable scenario (in which the demand for goods and services halves in a population where twice as many are seeking jobs) there is a slight increase in the rate of unemployment of 2%. If you think this sounds high, then you need to consider that during periods of economic crisis, the rate of unemployment may increase 2 or even 3 fold. But we are also leaving a number of factors out of the picture:
Firstly (partially lifting my self-imposed ban on considering imports and exports) money sent abroad is likely to result in increased demand for imports from the county to which the money is sent and some of that demand is likely to be filled by the country that has received the immigrants.
Moreover, if such monies are held in host country savings accounts pending (or instead of) being repatriated, then the host country banks will have more money to lend to host country businesses and this again will lead to the economy growing more quickly and more jobs and more demand being created as a result.
One possible reason for lower demand for goods and services which has not been considered is the fact that immigrants tend to be paid less for their work and therefore have lower incomes. This fact is, however, balanced by the fact that such workers are cheaper to employ and jobs are more likely to be created for cheaper workers. (Someone with a chip in their bath enamel may call in a plumber to replace the bath if he or she can get a plumber to do this for a reasonable price. If the price of a plumber is prohibitively high, the potential customer may just touch up the blemish with gloss paint and leave his/her money earning interest in the bank.)
All these considerations are likely to mitigate (potentially to a considerable extent) the 2% rate increase suggested by this thought experiment. But a far more important factor that needs to be considered here is the fact (excluded thus far) that, whether we have full employment or high rates of unemployment, there are always significant numbers of vacancies in the economy – for the reasons described above.
Immigration to a country with unemployment and vacancies where the profile of the immigrants does not match the profile of the host country
So bringing in progressively more features into this imaginary example (and thereby making it progressively more realistic but also more complicated) let’s now assume that there are - despite the 2 million unemployed – 1 million vacancies. Let’s ignore frictional unemployment and assume that this is all due to structural unemployment – shortages of the right skills at the right prices in the right places.
Migrants tend to travel to other countries looking for work precisely because they think they have skills to offer, that there will be a call for, in those destination countries. They will also (almost by definition) be prepared to travel to places where labour is required. Given what has been said about structural unemployment we only need to assume that the new immigrants (with their highly improbable demand profile) take up 450000 of the one million existing vacancies which the host population have failed to fill, and the overall unemployment rate will remain unchanged.
Conclusions
Of course none of these thought experiments prove anything for certain. It is, for example, logically possible that immigrants always burn 80% of the money they earn, or always so demoralize the host community that everyone else suddenly halves their consumption rates.
There are also more plausible things we’ve left out of the thought experiments - such as birth and death rates amongst the host community and the new immigrants and the timescales over which immigrants arrive and leave and over which jobs are created and destroyed. There is the fact that changes in productivity may allow an economy to produce more (or indeed less) per worker in response to changes in demand - though, again perhaps counter intuitively, there is no simple relationship between productivity and unemployment either. We might also wish to explore a greater range of hypothetical figures.
We have seen that there are highly contrived and improbable sets of circumstances that could (in principle) lead to small increases in unemployment rates following immigration but, in general (as I think the above thought experiments convincingly demonstrate), there is no simple relationship between changes in population size and changes in the rate of unemployment and many people's intuitions here are highly misleading. After all, if there were such a relationship there would be a consistent correlation between population growth/decline and employment rates around the world. We could have never have had full employment during the baby boomer years here in the UK, and Germany would always have higher unemployment rates than (say) Italy.
Clearly the solution to world poverty is not for all the poor people to move to the rich countries. Clearly a population (whether arrived at through high birth-rates or through migration) can be too large for the resources (and ultimately the land mass) of a particular country to support. There are all kinds of issues to do with migration that people might have views on. (I certainly have views: I was an immigrant to another country and am married to an immigrant to this country.) But the notion that the influx of immigrants to a country inevitably causes concomitant rises in unemployment rates is economic illiteracy.
This post arises from an ongoing Twitter conversation with a rather unpleasant tweeter who was trolling @DAaronovitch on the subject of immigrants causing unemployment and who seems to have shifted his attentions to me. I’m not sure this particular individual is amenable to rational persuasion – his tweets are sprinkled with insults – but the position he seems to hold – that jobs in a particular country are a bit like spaces in a car park – is common enough, and I think is worth challenging in the hope that some people may revise their opinions.
Full Employment
First of all a definition: "full employment" does not, as some people assume, mean that everyone has a job. This terminology is used to describe a state of affairs where the number of vacancies is on a par with the number of unemployed. Of course neither the number of unemployed nor the number of vacancies are things that can be measured particularly accurately, but it was pretty clear that during the Thatcher years - when we had about three million officially unemployed and about a hundred thousand official vacancies - that we did not have full employment. During the 1960s and again for a time in the 1990s we did.
So why do we still have any unemployment during periods of full employment?
Well there are essentially two forces at work here: "frictional" unemployment and "structural" unemployment.
Frictional unemployment occurs simply because the world of work is fluid and dynamic. Jobs are being destroyed and created all the time and people leave jobs and begin new ones. At any one moment in a country of sixty million or so, there are, at any one moment, certain to be significant numbers of people "between jobs" - even if everyone concerned is destined to begin a new job in the near future.
Structural unemployment is a more serious problem. This occurs when vacancies require skills that are in short supply or workers who are in short supply in the area of the country where they are needed. Thus, even during full employment, you may have (say) lots of unemployed bricklayers in the North alongside a shortage of hair stylists in the South.
What can we do about structural and frictional unemployment?
Well frictional unemployment is not necessarily such a bad thing. It provides a pool of workers who can be recruited quickly and contributes to a certain degree of fluidity and flexibility in the labour market, but, to the extent it is a problem, efficient dissemination of information is the key. Structural unemployment can be addressed - though not always successfully - by retraining and help in relocating. Such measures cannot, however, address the underlying problem during periods of less than full employment - a point that often seems lost on politicians and journalists:
Fallacy #1: The problem of unemployment can be solved by education or training
During the abovementioned Thatcher years I remember regularly shouting abuse at my wireless set as commentators repeatedly advanced the argument that, in a situation where there were about three million officially unemployed and a hundred thousand official vacancies, those with the best qualifications and the best interview skills were the most likely to get any jobs that were going (that bit’s true so far) therefore (this is where the reasoning went wrong) all we had to do was train everyone to be good at interviews and to raise educational standards and everyone would get a job. The fallacy behind this argument is so obvious that there does not seem to be any need to point it out, but I still hear versions of it repeated even to this day.
So why don't we always have full employment?
The key fact here is that employees, as well as being suppliers of labour, are consumers of goods and services. Ignoring the effect of imports and exports (or, alternatively, assuming that there is an equal balance of imports and exports) if the demand for goods and services from the population as a whole is roughly equal to the ability of the entire workforce to produce those goods and services we will have full employment; if the demand for goods and services from the population as a whole is greater than the ability of the entire workforce to produce those goods and services we will have an overall shortage of labour; and if the demand for goods and services from the population as a whole is lower than the ability of the entire workforce to produce those goods and services we will have net unemployment - ie unemployment that would still be there even if we could fill every vacancy.
So why don’t we always have enough demand for labour
This is the point where those of different political persuasions tend to part company. It could be argued (and indeed I should argue) that high unemployment was a deliberate policy for a while under Margaret Thatcher since this policy tipped the balance of power against working people and (especially) their trade unions. But let’s assume most governments of whatever political persuasion will usually seek to maximize employment. Left wingers tend to argue that the problem is that pay is too low. “Increase pay” they argue “and demand for labour will increase”. Right wingers tend to argue that the problem is that pay is too high. “Decrease pay, and thus the cost of labour,” they argue “and demand for labour will increase”.
I don’t wish to enter into that debate here, but given what has been said thus far, you can see where both sides are “coming from”.
But what about immigration?
We need to start using some figures now, but I’m going to make up some nice round numbers – it’s the principle I want to get across, not the real UK numbers. What I present here is a series of thought experiments:
Let’s assume there’s a country, not unlike the UK, with 60 million in habitants and a workforce (ie all the people in work plus all the people seeking work) of 20 million.
Immigration to a country with full employment and no unemployment and no vacancies
If we assume that all 20 million of the workforce are in paid employment, we can easily calculate that each inhabitant of this country generates an average demand (to produce the goods and services he/she consumes) of 20m/60m = ⅓ of a worker.
Or, to put it the other way around, each worker produces (on average) goods and services for 60m/20m = 3 consumers.
Now let’s assume that a million people extra people arrive from a country (not unlike, say Poland) and let us further assume (for the moment) that those people have similar profile of demand for goods and services as the “indigenous” population and a similar profile of working ability – ie a third of them are of working age and intend to seek work in the UK; the rest are children or other dependents.
What would happen?
The population of our imaginary country would increase to 61 million. These 61 million people would require the services of 20 and ⅓ million workers. The demand for labour would therefore increase to 20 and ⅓ million and ⅓ million extra jobs would be created to supply the new demand. This would soak up the ⅓ million immigrants who were looking for work and there would be once again full employment and 0% unemployment.
Old population: | 60000000 |
New population: | 61000000 |
Workforce required to supply new level of demand from increased | 20333333 |
Old workforce: | 20000000 |
New workforce: | 20333333 |
Old total in work: | 20000000 |
New total in work: | 20333333 |
Old total unemployed: | 0 |
New total unemployed: | 0 |
Old unemployment rate: | 0% |
New unemployment rate: | 0% |
Immigration to a country with unemployment and no vacancies
So let’s now consider what happens if we don’t have 100% on the workforce employed. Let’s assume that 18 million of the workforce are in paid employment and 2 million (ie 10%) are unemployed.
Again we can calculate that each inhabitant of this country generates an average demand for 18m/60m = 0.3 of a worker or that each worker is produces (on average) goods and services for 60m/18m = 3 and ⅓ consumers.
Now again let’s assume that a million extra people arrive with a similar profile of demand for goods and services and jobs. The Population of our imaginary country will increase to 61 million. These 61 million people will require the services of 18.3 million workers.
Unfortunately, since 20333333 workers are now chasing 18300000 million jobs, there will not be quite enough jobs created this time round to soak up all the new immigrant workers. Unemployment will rise (in absolute terms) by 33333, the unemployment rate will, however, remain at 100x2033333/20333333 = 10% - just as it was before the immigrants arrived.
Old population: | 60000000 |
New population: | 61000000 |
Workforce required to supply new level of demand from increased | 18300000 |
Old workforce: | 20000000 |
New workforce: | 20333333 |
Old total in work: | 18000000 |
New total in work: | 18300000 |
Old total unemployed: | 2000000 |
New total unemployed: | 2033333 |
Old unemployment rate: | 10% |
New unemployment rate: | 10% |
Immigration to a country with unemployment and no vacancies where the demand profile of the immigrants does not match the demand profile of the host country
A reasonable objection to the thought experiments presented so far would be to point out that the demand for goods and services among the new immigrants may be lower than that in the host community (the new immigrants may, for example, save more or send money back home) and the demand for jobs among the new immigrants may be higher than that in the host community (the new immigrants may, for example, have a significantly higher proportion of people of working age).
So what happens to the figures when we consider such factors?
Again for simplicity, let’s consider what happens if a typical immigrant consumes only half what a typical non-migrant consumes and is twice as likely to be looking for work (and all other assumptions remain the same as in the previous example).
Old population: | 60000000 |
New population: | 61000000 |
Workforce required to supply new level of demand from increased | 18150000 |
Old workforce: | 20000000 |
New workforce: | 20666666 |
Old total in work: | 18000000 |
New total in work: | 18150000 |
Old total unemployed: | 2000000 |
New total unemployed: | 2516666 |
Old unemployment rate: | 10% |
New unemployment rate: | 12% |
So in this highly improbable scenario (in which the demand for goods and services halves in a population where twice as many are seeking jobs) there is a slight increase in the rate of unemployment of 2%. If you think this sounds high, then you need to consider that during periods of economic crisis, the rate of unemployment may increase 2 or even 3 fold. But we are also leaving a number of factors out of the picture:
Firstly (partially lifting my self-imposed ban on considering imports and exports) money sent abroad is likely to result in increased demand for imports from the county to which the money is sent and some of that demand is likely to be filled by the country that has received the immigrants.
Moreover, if such monies are held in host country savings accounts pending (or instead of) being repatriated, then the host country banks will have more money to lend to host country businesses and this again will lead to the economy growing more quickly and more jobs and more demand being created as a result.
One possible reason for lower demand for goods and services which has not been considered is the fact that immigrants tend to be paid less for their work and therefore have lower incomes. This fact is, however, balanced by the fact that such workers are cheaper to employ and jobs are more likely to be created for cheaper workers. (Someone with a chip in their bath enamel may call in a plumber to replace the bath if he or she can get a plumber to do this for a reasonable price. If the price of a plumber is prohibitively high, the potential customer may just touch up the blemish with gloss paint and leave his/her money earning interest in the bank.)
All these considerations are likely to mitigate (potentially to a considerable extent) the 2% rate increase suggested by this thought experiment. But a far more important factor that needs to be considered here is the fact (excluded thus far) that, whether we have full employment or high rates of unemployment, there are always significant numbers of vacancies in the economy – for the reasons described above.
Immigration to a country with unemployment and vacancies where the profile of the immigrants does not match the profile of the host country
So bringing in progressively more features into this imaginary example (and thereby making it progressively more realistic but also more complicated) let’s now assume that there are - despite the 2 million unemployed – 1 million vacancies. Let’s ignore frictional unemployment and assume that this is all due to structural unemployment – shortages of the right skills at the right prices in the right places.
Migrants tend to travel to other countries looking for work precisely because they think they have skills to offer, that there will be a call for, in those destination countries. They will also (almost by definition) be prepared to travel to places where labour is required. Given what has been said about structural unemployment we only need to assume that the new immigrants (with their highly improbable demand profile) take up 450000 of the one million existing vacancies which the host population have failed to fill, and the overall unemployment rate will remain unchanged.
Old population: | 60000000 |
New population: | 61000000 |
Workforce required to supply new level of demand from increased | 18150000 |
Old workforce: | 20000000 |
New workforce: | 20666666 |
Old total in work: | 18000000 |
New total in work: | 18600000 |
Old total unemployed: | 2000000 |
New total unemployed: | 2066666 |
Old vacancies | 1000000 |
New vacancies | 550000 |
Old unemployment rate: | 10% |
New unemployment rate: | 10% |
Conclusions
Of course none of these thought experiments prove anything for certain. It is, for example, logically possible that immigrants always burn 80% of the money they earn, or always so demoralize the host community that everyone else suddenly halves their consumption rates.
There are also more plausible things we’ve left out of the thought experiments - such as birth and death rates amongst the host community and the new immigrants and the timescales over which immigrants arrive and leave and over which jobs are created and destroyed. There is the fact that changes in productivity may allow an economy to produce more (or indeed less) per worker in response to changes in demand - though, again perhaps counter intuitively, there is no simple relationship between productivity and unemployment either. We might also wish to explore a greater range of hypothetical figures.
We have seen that there are highly contrived and improbable sets of circumstances that could (in principle) lead to small increases in unemployment rates following immigration but, in general (as I think the above thought experiments convincingly demonstrate), there is no simple relationship between changes in population size and changes in the rate of unemployment and many people's intuitions here are highly misleading. After all, if there were such a relationship there would be a consistent correlation between population growth/decline and employment rates around the world. We could have never have had full employment during the baby boomer years here in the UK, and Germany would always have higher unemployment rates than (say) Italy.
Clearly the solution to world poverty is not for all the poor people to move to the rich countries. Clearly a population (whether arrived at through high birth-rates or through migration) can be too large for the resources (and ultimately the land mass) of a particular country to support. There are all kinds of issues to do with migration that people might have views on. (I certainly have views: I was an immigrant to another country and am married to an immigrant to this country.) But the notion that the influx of immigrants to a country inevitably causes concomitant rises in unemployment rates is economic illiteracy.
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