Woolas dismisses resignation calls

GOVERNMENT minister Phil Woolas today hit back amid calls for him to be sacked — saying it was his job to talk about immigration.

The Oldham East and Saddleworth MP and Immigration Minister questioned the reason for the Office for National Statistics publishing figures last week that showed one in nine UK residents was born abroad.

Sir Michael Scholar, head of the UK Statistics Authority, said the ONS were being “pilloried” for publishing objective information and said the figures were released because they were “in the public interest”.

And former chairman of the Commons statistics panel Michael Fallon MP said that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith should sack Mr Woolas if he refused to withdraw his comments.

He said: “It’s disgraceful, undermining the ONS. You can’t have ministers attacking its independence.”

But Mr Woolas said he believed he was right to be concerned figures were being published outside the normal release schedule.

He added: “It is my job to speak about immigration. Of course the statistics body is independent so are the courts but that does not mean we cannot give our views. It is a free country for goodness sake.

“Calls for my resignation are just political tittle tattle. The Times leader column backed my point of view.”

Mr Woolas had warned the ONS not to “enter what is the most inflamed debate in British politics.”

He added: “People in Oldham know this is a highly sensitive issue and it is important we get the right facts in the public domain.

“It is not for the ONS to decide on figures, they are an independent statistics body. The public will make their minds up. I trust the people of Oldham to have enough common sense to work things out.”

Most people believed the Government had released the data. But Mr Woolas said: “In fact, it was the ONS with no ministerial involvement and, indeed, despite my objections. What’s worse is that the press release highlighted the one-in-nine figure as the main finding.

“So, the Government gets the blame by some for whipping up anti-foreign sentiment when it is the independent ONS who are playing politics.

“The justification from the ONS who had, out of schedule, highlighted the figure two weeks earlier because it was ‘topical’ is, at best, naive or, at worst, sinister.”

The headline figure did not explain that many of the people born overseas were at force bases in Germany.