Chris Philp's ‘foreign’ claim about London social housing was inflammatory and false

In his quest to fire up hostility to immigration the shadow Home Secretary was either unaware or didn't care that he was misleading the country

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According to Chris Philp, MP for Croydon South and aspiring to be the nation’s Home Secretary, “48 per cent of London’s social housing is occupied by people who are foreign”.

Let’s go through the ways in which that assertion is incorrect, inflammatory and an insight into how far the Conservative Party has fallen.

Philp’s definition of a foreigner and the meaning he ascribes to data gathered during the 2021 Census are, whether by accident or by design, misleading and feed an ugly and untrue far-Right story about London in particular and immigrants in general.

In making his remarks on X last week, Philp gave fresh momentum to that story, even though it has been being convincingly challenged since at least the back end of 2023 after it began circulating.

There are two big problems with what Philp claimed:

1. The 48 per cent figure is not, in fact, a measure of the proportion of those living in London social housing who were born overseas.

2. Even if it was, many of those the 48 per cent figure does refer to, who were indeed born overseas, are British citizens.

The Census data Philp relied on isn’t about the total number of London social housing occupants at all. Rather, it records the “household reference person” of such dwellings.

In UK statistics, the term household reference person (HRP) is an updated version of the older concept of the “head of the household”. It means one individual within a household, the one in whose name the accommodation is owned or rented or is otherwise responsible for it.

So although the Census data says that 376,754 HRPs in London social housing out of the 790,959 recorded were born outside the UK – 48 per cent of them – it doesn’t follow that 48 per cent of all London social housing occupants were born outside the UK.

Dealing first with those 376,754 HRPs, is Philp right to call them all “foreign”? Many people who migrate to the UK from another country later attain British citizenship and receive a certificate to prove it, along with a welcome pack.

Having British citizenship is a type of British nationality. A migrant who becomes a British national is, like all other British nationals, entitled to apply for the British passport, and will probably get one.

Looking at Londoners as a whole – all nine million or so of us, regardless of housing tenure – the 2021 Census found that 41 per cent of us were born overseas, but only 23 per cent had a non-UK passport.

Some British citizens do not have a UK passport and might have one for another country – Ireland, for example – meaning they have dual citizenship. It’s a bit complicated. But unless the London HRPs born overseas have been attaining British citizenship (mostly through “naturalisation”) at a far slower rate than other Londoners born overseas, a big chunk of that 48 per cent will no longer be considered foreign nationals by the Home Office. Many will not have been so for decades. Yet Philp, who would be Home Secretary if the Conservatives were in government, thinks it’s OK to go on calling that category of his fellow Britons “foreign”.

When we consider the other occupants of London social housing whose Census HRP was born overseas, the 48 per cent figure looks even dodgier. Many of them will be that person’s children or even grandchildren and there’s a good chance that they have been British since birth and if not become to later.

Thanks to PA media’s analysis of December 2023 we know that other Census data shows that in 2021 more than 1.3 million UK-born people were living in social housing in London compared to about 525,000 who were born overseas. That’s about 29 per cent.

And once you then strip out those born overseas who have become British citizens, the figure for non-UK passport holding Londoners mentioned above suggests about half of them might be British citizens too. Others have looked into this and found it to be less than 15 per cent – that’s a lot less than 48 per cent.

Why did Philp think it a good idea to revive this, to put it mildly, questionable and discredited narrative? The answer appears obvious: it is part of his party’s strategy to fish for voter support in the same pool of anti-immigrant sentiment as Reform UK, which is currently ahead of the Tories in opinion polls.

That’s what informs Philp’s slack and emotive use of the word “foreign”. Indeed, the map that forms part of of his X post was compiled by an ardent Reform supporter from the Rupert Lowe wing of that party who uses the same definition.

It’s a formulation that legitimises the mistaken belief that migrants are the cause of London’s – and Britain’s – social housing shortages; the idea that if immigration was stopped there would suddenly be plenty to go round.

Philp also makes the bald assertion that these “foreign” London social housing occupants “have likely paid little or no tax”, providing no evidence to back it up. In summary, his message is: “They’re coming over here, living on benefits and taking all our housing.”

There is also a culture war attack line embedded there, a dog whistle about who is and who isn’t really British that was heard loud and clear by an out-and-out racist who responded favourably to Philp’s post

.Does Philp apply his definition of “foreign” to all British citizens who were born overseas? To Mo Farah, for example? To his erstwhile parliamentary colleague Nadhim Zahawi? Or does he reserve his pejorative deployment of the word for those most likely to attract resentment from the sorts of people the Tories want to woo back from Reform?

Does he know or care that the figures he has used are wrong and have been shown to be wrong many times, or has he taken inspiration from Donald Trump, who when caught in a lie responds by repeating the lie until, in the minds of those he is able to dupe, it becomes an alternative truth?

Does he care or understand that the distinction he inherently makes between Britons who were born in Britain and those who were not implies that, whatever immigration law says, the latter group should not enjoy the same entitlements as the former? That a two-tier approach to British nationality should apply, with anyone not born here forever treated differently?

The fact that such questions even need to be asked shows how far to the Right the Conservatives have travelled and how low they are prepared to go. And it makes you wonder what depths they might sink to next.

Footnote: Philp has a history of making false claims and failing to correct them.