Was it easier to deport migrants to France before Brexit?
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 24 September 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week:
Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey says it was easier to deport illegal migrants to Europe when we were in the EU. Is that true?
Did the governor of the Bank of England get his numbers wrong on the UK’s ageing population?
Why is the price of beef up by 25% in a year?
Is it possible to prove that MPs are using AI to write their speeches?
If you’ve seen a number you think we should take a look at, email the team: [email protected]
Presenter: Tim Harford Reporter: Lizzy McNeill Producers: Nathan Gower and Nicholas Barrett Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele Sound mix: Gareth Jones Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:07.3 | Right, you feeling ready? I'm feeling ready. |
| 0:10.8 | I'm Amal Rajin. Join me on my new podcast for in-depth conversations with pioneers and |
| 0:16.0 | innovators, talking about the trends and ideas that could help shape and change our future. |
| 0:21.4 | We are going to be digital citizens of this AI world, whether we like it or not. |
| 0:26.2 | From declining birth rates to disinformation online, can they solve the world's biggest challenges? |
| 0:32.0 | What I would love to do is go to the transfer and say radically cut the taxes of those with children. |
| 0:37.3 | Radical with me, Amol Rajin. |
| 0:39.3 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:41.0 | Hello and welcome to more or less, the show that takes the M and the B and the S out of numbers. |
| 0:47.7 | Leaving us with Nour, still workshopping this, we will get there eventually, send in your suggestions |
| 0:53.0 | to more or less at BBC.co. |
| 0:54.8 | UK. I'm Tim Harford, by the way, and this week we follow a tangled trail of confusion |
| 1:00.6 | about the UK's ageing population. That trail begins in Jackson Hole and ends, well, no spoilers yet. |
| 1:09.2 | We ask, where's the beef? |
| 1:13.0 | And why is it so expensive these days? |
| 1:17.5 | And while ChatGPT isn't writing our scripts just yet, |
| 1:22.6 | some people think it is being used to write the speeches of parliamentarians. |
| 1:25.8 | Is it? Can the numbers tip us off? |
| 1:30.4 | But first, thousands of illegal migrants are arriving on the British coast in small boats. On some days, more than a thousand arrive. On some days, |
| 1:36.2 | there are none at all. The government would like to send more of them back to where they came |
| 1:40.4 | from and have done a deal with France, to that effect, the one-in, one-out policy. |
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