The reasons for emigration from the UK vary.

The Government aim to achieve strong, sustainable and balanced growth in the UK; creating a more educated workforce that is the most flexible in Europe; making the UK the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business; and encouraging investment and exports as a route to a more balanced economy.

It is very difficult to make robust estimates of the effect on the UK economy of emigration, especially when trying to assess the costs and benefits of different types of migrants. Any assessment should take into account immigration and hence consider the effect of net migration to the UK.

There are many factors to consider when assessing the impact of emigration on the economy, such as the age, economic activity and skills of the migrants and how these interact with the resident and immigrant population. A recent Home Office report examined emigration from the UK and found that the majority of British people emigrating are of working age, there appears to be an inverse association between British emigration and unemployment in the UK, and that a large and increasing proportion of British citizens emigrating from the UK are those from professional or managerial occupations.

This study is available here:

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/immigration-asylum-research/horr68/horr68-report?view=Binary

The UK Government through DfID works closely with several United Nations organisations, including the United Nations Development Programme, to deliver basic services to the poorest people in Zimbabwe. There are no reliable figures about the number of teachers who have emigrated from Zimbabwe since 2005. However there is enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that large numbers of qualified teachers have left Zimbabwe in the past eight years, thereby adversely affecting the provision of quality education in Zimbabwe as underlined by an increase in the ratio of trained teachers to pupils and declines in levels of learning among pupils. The Government of Zimbabwe have indicated that around 20,000 teachers have returned to teaching since the signing of the global political agreement in 2008. It is unclear how many of these 20,000 had emigrated since 2005.

Between 2011 and 2015 DfID is providing substantial financial and technical support to improve education opportunities in Zimbabwe, including through the second phase of the Education Transition Fund (ETF II) managed by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). A key element of ETF II is to improve the quality of teaching, including through enhanced training and support to teachers which should help to reduce the likelihood of further emigration of teachers and improve learning outcomes among pupils.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) produce estimates of migration by age on an annual basis. These estimates of emigration show that in 2011 86,000 persons aged 15-24, 201,000 aged 25-44, 38,000 aged 45-59/64 and 9,000 aged 60/65 and over emigrated from the UK. For all age groups emigration from the UK was less than immigration to the UK resulting in positive net migration into the UK for all age groups (table 1).

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.

Letter from Glen Watson, dated December 2012:

As Director General for the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I have been asked to respond to your Parliamentary Question what the sample size of the International Passenger Survey on people emigrating from the UK was for each (a) ethnic grouping and (b) country of birth in each year since 2004. 132277

The International Passenger Survey (IPS), used by ONS to calculate estimates of long-term international migration (LTIM), does not collect any information on the ethnicity of respondents to the survey.

The IPS does, however, collect data on the country of birth of respondents to the survey. Table 1 shows the country of birth of respondents emigrating from the UK for a period of 12 months or more, from 2004 to 2011.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.

Letter from Stephen Penneck, dated July 2012:

As Director General for the Office for National Statistics, I have been asked to respond to your recent Parliamentary Question asking how many people emigrated from the UK in each of the last five years. (115500)

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) produces estimates of long-term international migration, primarily based on the International Passenger Survey (IPS).

Please find following a table showing emigration from the UK for the last five years:

Long Term International Migration (LTIM) estimates are available on the ONS website:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/migration1/long-term-international-migration/november-2010/long-term-international-migration-2-series.zip

Please refer to Table 2.01a "LTIM Citizenship 1991 - 2010", which provides estimates of the number of people who have emigrated from the UK in each of the last five years.

The IPS migrant data provides the foundation of the LTIM estimates with adjustments for asylum seekers, people whose intentions change with regard to their length of stay, and for international migration to and from Northern Ireland.

Long-term international migration data produced by the ONS applies the UN definition of someone who moves from their country of previous residence for a period of at least a year, irrespective of citizenship.

There are no data available on the amount of income tax lost as a result of the relocation of British citizens to other countries.