---

London Population (ONS)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning Croydon. The borough has also seen a downward revision on the various ONS calculations and assumptions. However, that has come at a time when the number of migrants registered with GPs was more than 37,000 in the five-year period to April 2007 and when the number of national insurance numbers given out from 2002 to 2006 was almost 18,000. I also know from correspondence with the Jobcentre Plus office that national insurance number registrations accelerated to 7,000 in the first 11 months of the following financial year. Places such as Croydon are suffering from problems in their local government settlement, such that the rate at which they are delivering universal services—that is, non-social services and non-education provision—is only a quarter of the rate for other London councils. Does my hon. Friend agree that the figures for migrants are having an impact on the local government financial settlements that councils enjoy?