Reform UK is leading in the polls and the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, has launched a “Britain is lawless” campaign, building on last year’s “Britain is broken” slogan.
Mr Farage has made statements linking sexual offences and immigration.
“An Afghan male has a 22 times more likely chance of being convicted of rape than somebody born in this country,” he said during the campaign launch on Monday.
He also said that “40% of sexual assaults in London over the course of the last five years have been committed by those born overseas”.
We analysed the data – and this is what we found
Our analysis, informed by advice given to us by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the Metropolitan Police, the Home Office, and Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, shows there is likely a significant difference in offending rates among Afghans compared with Britons – but not to the extent described by Mr Farage.
Our estimates conclude that Afghans are actually four times more likely to be convicted of a sexual offence than someone born in the UK, rather than 22 times.
Limitations to the data, which we will explain in more detail later on, mean that “four times higher” is still potentially an over-estimate.
We also found the overall foreign-born population of London was slightly higher than the percentage of non-British people who have been charged with a sexual offence since 2018. That would mean that foreign-born individuals are less likely to be charged with sexual offences than somebody born in the UK.
How can the numbers be so different?
The figures come from comparing the numbers of offences committed by people of different nationalities with the number of people belonging to those nationalities in the wider population.
The police provided data on the number of people from different countries who were convicted of various crimes. There may be some imperfections in how that data is collected and recorded, and also in terms of how many sexual assaults go either unreported or don’t result in a conviction, but the figures we’re working from are the most comprehensive currently available.
That data says there were 77 Afghans convicted of sexual offences in England and Wales from 2021 to 2023, compared with 14,270 people convicted from the UK. Those are the same figures cited by Mr Farage.
But, there are different ways of defining nationality and counting how many people from various different countries are in the UK.
Using data that counts people born abroad, for example, compared with alternative data that lists people’s declared nationality, will give two very different ratios of how prevalent crime is among people from different countries.
We asked the ONS and the Migration Observatory which figures were best to use.
Both organisations told us that no one measure was perfect to compare against police nationality statistics, but both also told us the figures cited by Mr Farage use an estimate for the Afghan population that is “too small”.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Cooper insists no panic over migration
The Home Office also told us the method used to generate Mr Farage’s figures underestimates the Afghan population. They added that if the correct data had been used, the figure for the offending rate among the Afghan community would be lower.
They also said Afghans in Britain are more likely to be of working age, compared with Britons who include a higher proportion of elderly people and children. People of working age are most likely to be criminally active.
Mr Farage’s central assertion – the 22 times higher offending rate – comes from a comparison of the police figures against nationality data from the ONS’s Annual Population Survey (APS), last published in 2021.
That put the Afghan population of England and Wales at 13,000 and the British population at 53.6 million.
For our analysis, we used “country of birth” data from the 2021 Census, as recommended to us by the ONS, the Met Police and the Home Office.
These figures placed the Afghan population of England and Wales to be 65,687 in 2021, five times higher than the APS estimate. They also put the British-born population slightly lower, at 49.6 million.
The Migration Observatory told us that, due to high levels of immigration since the 2021 census, particularly from Afghanistan following the resurgence of the Taliban in 2021, these numbers are also now too low.
The ONS, however, told us the census figures were the “preferred measure when looking at the longer-term impacts of migration and the population of people who have moved to the UK”. So, in the understanding that they too are likely to be an under-estimate, we used them to compare with Mr Farage’s claim.
Using the census figures, we get 11.7 sexual offences per 10,000 Afghans, and 2.9 per 10,000 Britons. The Afghan figure is four times higher.
Using the APS figures, we get 59.2 offences per 10,000 Afghans, and 2.7 per 10,000 Britons. That’s where Mr Farage’s higher figure of 22 times higher comes from.
Sexual assaults in London
Mr Farage said that “40% of sexual assaults in London over the course of the last five years have been committed by those born overseas”.
The 2021 census data for London says that 40.6% of the population was born overseas.
Where do these figures come from?
The stats used by Mr Farage come from analysis by an organisation called the Centre for Migration Control (CMC). The CMC describes itself as a “think tank committed to controlling and reducing migration to Britain”.
The CMC took the police figures, provided to it in response to a Freedom of Information request, and added its own comparison to population data.
The CMC also points out that there are limitations in the publicly available data, in terms of how well they estimate the number of people from different countries present in the UK.
We asked why it chose to use the APS data, rather than “country of birth” census estimates as recommended to us by the ONS, the Met and the Home Office.
It said: “In recent days the ONS has been handing out incorrect population stats and statements to other news outlets and then forced to retract them. To blindly insist on using ‘country of birth’ rather than ‘nationality’ reeks of an agenda which does a huge disservice to your readers.
“Using ‘country of birth’ populations to compare arrests by national groups is clearly flawed. The data provided by the Met in our most recent research, and by the Ministry of Justice in our previous research, was with regards to arrest by ‘nationality’, not ‘country of birth’.
“Were ‘country of birth’ figures to be used, the British nationality figure would be under-represented owing to it excluding many millions of foreign-born individuals who have obtained British citizenship. The inverse is true with regards to the foreign national figure – which would be over-represented owing to many individuals born overseas now being British citizens.”
The Met Police told Sky News that “country of birth” is something they record in their Connect crime database – where their figures came from. They also advised us that the “country of birth” census figures were likely to be the best option for us to use to make a comparison against their figures.
Mr Farage also mentioned people “born in this country” and “those born overseas” in his statements. Those refer directly to people’s “country of birth”, rather than their current nationality.
Read more: Nigel Farage dared me to walk in London after 9pm: Here’s my response
Responding to our analysis, a Reform spokesperson told us on Monday that “The Sun ran the four-in-10 figure in London last week and we trust the Centre for Migration Control’s numbers”.
On Tuesday, we asked them if Mr Farage misspoke in mentioning people’s country of birth rather than their nationality, as described in the CMC data he was quoting from. They repeated their existing statement.
Responding to our analysis, CMC research director Robert Bates said: “The figures produced by Sky are the result of comparing wholly unrelated population data – the result of too many in the media simply refusing to accept that foreign nationals are disproportionately convicted for certain crimes. Gerrymandering irrefutable statistics by comparing apples and pears.
“I note Sky News has never once reported on Ministry of Justice data which shows a quarter of sexual assault and rape convictions last year were of foreign nationals.
“When beginning their reporting on this issue, Sky News approached the ONS with only a partial representation of what they sought to report. Official data in this country is in a woeful condition, and the APS is the only dataset which reports on nationality, with Afghan nationals in the APS closely marrying the number of passport holders in the census. To blindly insist on using ‘country of birth’ rather than ‘nationality’ reeks of an agenda which does a huge disservice to your readers.
“Mr Farage is correct in his assertions regarding sexual offence conviction rates in England and Wales and, as BBC Verify confirmed on Monday, foreign nationals are disproportionately represented in sexual offence charges in London.”
Asked whether Mr Farage misspoke in mentioning people’s country of birth rather than their nationality, they told us: “I’m relatively comfortable with Mr Farage’s comments.
“Most people born in this country will be British nationals, and thus the comparison applies. Roughly 1% people born in this country hold a passport which is non-UK/Ireland as primary passport.
“He has if anything understated the scale, not overstating it, as some British nationals proceeded against may very well have been born overseas.”
The Migration Observatory said: “It is likely that rates of criminal convictions and incarceration vary substantially by nationality, due to differences in people’s age, reasons for migration, socio-economic status and previous life experiences. However, problems in the official data currently make it extremely difficult to analyse these variations with confidence.
“The CMC say they used the publicly available APS figures from 2021 and cross-referenced these with the census. These will be too small. Things get worse when you take it down to the individual nationality level using APS, which is why we do not currently do this.
“The census is now over four years old and there has been an unusually high level of migration since then. It can also be difficult to accurately measure some groups of migrants even in the census.
“All this means that, while we can be confident that there will be variations between different groups of non-citizens in the UK – with some seeing higher rates of incarceration than Brits and others lower rates – we cannot measure them precisely.”
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
