No Recourse to Public Facts
NRPF, The Media, and Mis/Dis/Malinformation
Public understanding of migration is, by most available measures, badly out of step with reality. Polling consistently finds that a majority of the British public fail to agree on or identify objectively true statements and trends in the migration domain; for example, most believe net migration is rising even as official statistics show it is falling, a misconception that holds firm across supporters of every major party.
Hanlon’s razor posits that one should never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity. This often seems apt as a partial explanation for the situation we’ve found ourselves in. However, it really fails to explain why so many wealthy, “capable,” and powerful figures (take your pick) continue to push falsehoods in what appears to be a deliberate disinformation campaign. And it may explain the situation we focus on today: a painfully inaccurate letter penned to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Migration and Citizenship.
Although over 500 miles away, our attention briefly turned towards a different local authority, not one in the north east of Scotland, but in Essex. Richard Bingley, the leader of Thurrock Council in Essex, authored the letter we focus on.
The purpose of the communication was to highlight the social care support the council is obliged to provide to “children in need” with No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 – the English equivalent of Section 22 of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995. This support is not budgeted for and has grown in recent years, surpassing half a million pounds in 25/26, costs that the council deems ”unsustainable” for Thurrock residents.
In the letter, council leader Bingley requests that the Home Office fund this support and raises concerns about the overly long processing times for immigration applications. These are asks that we, as a partnership, echo: the lack of funding provided to LAs to support the social care system and the incompetence that characterises the Home Office are serious concerns that should interest all. What we do not endorse was their ‘description’ of NRPF, which was dangerously inaccurate. Of the four sentences that make up that description, three are completely inaccurate, whilst the fourth is a poor interpretation of the relationship between entitlements to social care and the ECHR.
NRPF does not occur when a parent overstays their permission to remain in the country. NRPF applies at the point of entry for almost all who regularly migrate to the UK; it is stated on their immigration documents and remains in effect throughout the length of their visa. Should someone overstay their permission, they will continue to have NRPF; nothing will change. Individuals with NRPF will not be able to access most of the British welfare state; most prominently universal credit and homelessness assistance. The statement that they “do not have … private means to support themselves” is offensively wrong – individuals with NRPF are only granted their visa and admitted into the UK on the basis that they can privately support themselves, forced to evidence as much multiple times, all whilst paying substantial visa fees, in the thousands, for the permission to do so. Local authorities are not required to provide support to children with NRPF as described in the letter. They are only obliged to do so if they are deemed a “child in need”, a classification that requires a high threshold of need, often provided only at the point of street homelessness. Even once the child’s need for support is identified, gatekeeping practices often stand in the way.
This inaccurate presentation of the facts is either a mistake by someone whose professional responsibility is to provide clarity and fact- and evidence-based leadership, or a deliberate design intended to ‘overstate’ the potential catchment population and inflate the scale of a problem that is already substantial and troubling. In doing so, it makes it easier to present this as a loophole for support, an easy avenue for support designed for a population whose stay in the UK is “supposed to be” on the basis that they do not ask too much of their local authorities.
Identifying and correcting mis-, dis-, and malinformation is work that many in the third sector are forced to do on a near-constant basis. There is an insatiable need for corrections, one that outstrips our supply of keyboards and FTEs. The only real means for any meaningful change is to examine, poke, and prod at the underlying conditions that have allowed our status quo to become the status quo.
It’s also what has motivated our submission to the UK Government’s consultation titled “A New Strategic Direction for UK Media”. Where we pay particular attention to chapter 2, titled “supporting a healthy information environment”. This chapter, and by extension our submission, focuses on the consequences of a media environment that has crowded out consensus and fact, and potential ways, if any exist, to remedy this.
Work through the toggle below to read a summary of our responses to key themes; however, to gain a better understanding of the relationship between migration, misinformation and society, read our submission in full, attached at the bottom of the page.
Trust in news has fallen to its lowest level since records began, with only 37% of the public saying they trust the news they consume. At the same time, 62% of UK adults report being concerned about misinformation online. At the same time, 62% of UK adults report being concerned about misinformation online.
These two trends are inherently related and cannot be divorced from the proliferation of generative AI tools such as GROK and Sora. The arrival of such tools to the mass market has significantly lowered the barriers to creating convincing false narratives, enabling the rapid creation and spread of political misinformation at scale. During the 2024 Southport riots, AI-generated imagery depicting clashes between British men and Muslims received disproportionately higher engagement than authentic content, demonstrating both the virality of synthetic content and the ease with which these tools can be weaponised.
Social media platforms, designed to maximise engagement rather than accuracy, amplify sensationalist and false content as a matter of course. Falsehoods spread faster and reach further than the truth; they are 70% more likely to be retweeted on X than factual content.
The fact that “untrustworthy news” is so prevalent across platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and TikTok, should not be seen as a design quirk nor a surprise; as the purpose of a system is what it does.
Misinformation rarely coexists with accurate information; rather, it actively displaces it, reshaping public understanding and hardening or nurturing prejudice. Through what researchers describe as a “normalisation effect,” repeated negative framing, even when factually corrected, gradually shifts what is considered acceptable discourse.
In the context of migration, this often manifests as strikingly persistent false beliefs. Most British people incorrectly believe net migration is rising, when it has actually fallen by more than three-quarters since its 2023 peak. Only 16% of people think migration fell in the past year, while half the public (49%) believe it increased despite the sharp decline, these are ‘beliefs’ hold across party lines.
When people hear the word “migrant,” they overwhelmingly think of asylum seekers and refugees, estimating that asylum accounts for 33% of UK immigration, when the true figure is around 9% . In reality, students and skilled workers make up a much larger proportion of arrivals, study accounts for 52% of immigration, while work accounts for 31% .
These distortions of fact can create collective policy preferences far removed from reality, generating pressure to address problems that are either imagined to be of an exaggerated size or entirely imagined. This, in turn, leads to actions and behaviours that are completely disconnected from reality and are overwhelmingly dangerous; think of the potential ramifications of leaving the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on the back of campaigns that have hijacked and misrepresented judicial and migration narratives.
Democracy depends on shared factual baselines, trust in elections, and informed public deliberation – all of which are weakened when false or deceptive claims circulate widely.
Disinformation produces what scholars term “epistemic cynicism”, which is a deep-seated scepticism about whether truth or reliable information can be known at all. This threatens the perceived legitimacy of democratic institutions as a whole by undermining citizens’ trust in each other and a societies colletive beliefs. If citizens assume others have been manipulated, they become less willing to treat opposing views as reasonable, making evidence-based discussion and democratic dialogue nearly impossible.
This can become a vicious circle in which distrust of others’ competence turns into distrust of the democratic system itself.
Democracy has never been free of misinformation, but the normalisation of democratic backsliding across Europe has legitimised and accelerated its spread. The questionable democratic practices of nations like Hungary, the USA, and Slovakia have directly affected their media ecosystems, proliferating and even canonising misinformation as political campaigns adopt an “ends justify the means” approach.
Brexit offers the clearest UK illustration: coverage of immigration tripled during the campaign and was overwhelmingly negative, with measurable impact on the vote. The infamous “£350 million a week” claim remained prominent despite being debunked, and studies found that exposure to it increased support for Brexit even after correction.
Internationally, disinformation has targeted elections in the US (2016), France (2017), and at least seventeen other countries since then. In the most hyper-local example, the 2026 Scottish Parliament election, an Israeli technology firm was accused of orchestrating a disinformation campaign targeting the First Minister – the same firm has been linked to similar campaigns in election cycles in New York, France and Angola.
The result is a democratic environment in which citizens struggle to distinguish fact from falsehood, and the idea of a shared and evidence-based reality becomes increasingly difficult to sustain, which rids damages our prospects of developing cohesion and community.
Misinformation about migration often goes byeond distorting public debate to producing material harms for already disadvantaged populations and, in the most extreme cases, costs lives. It is obvious to note that the relationship between distorted public opinion and the conditions for such harm are related.
For migrants with NRPF a large pool of misinformation in relation to rights and entitlements shapes false beliefs. These false beliefs make informed decision-making more challenging than it has to be and actively harm physical, emotional and financial health, whether that be someone in distress mistaking NHS treatment as a public fund or a hungry family turned away from a foodbank by a volunteer mistaking their support as a public fund.
Poor-quality information deprives people of the support they are entitled to and often simultaneously jeopardises their ability to live in the country by prompting them to seek support from the state that, in a humane society, should be available to them but is actively (but poorly advertised) locked behind the “public funds” label.
Misinformation also threatens a more literal and immediate form of violence. The hostile environments that make up “Fortress Europe” are systems built for deterrence and not to save lives.
In late July 2026, dozens of migrants from Morocco drowned or were killed trying to enter the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, prompted in large part by misleading social media posts that misrepresented a Spanish Supreme Court ruling. False claims portraying President Sanchez’s regularisation campaign as a general ban on returns triggered a surge of thousands attempting the dangerous sea crossing. This pattern, a high demand for safety and information, and states providing an embarrassing lack thereof is systematically weaponised by people smugglers who profit from mis-, dis-, and malinformation.
The ability to judge the accuracy and reliability of information is the primary defence against the harms of poor quality information. Yet the British public is overconfident and undertrained, only 45% of adults are confident they can judge the truthfulness of information sources, and just 30% believe they can identify AI-generated content.
Ofcom has a statutory duty to promote media literacy and has published recommendations on how services can empower the public to engage critically and safely with the content they encounter. Yet mass upskilling remains essential. Collaboration between public service media and civil society organisations (CSOs) could be valuable, particularly if the focus is on amplification.
CSOs already possess the expertise, community trust, and on-the-ground relationships necessary to understand the misinformation landscape in ways that large institutions cannot.
User-focused interventions like nudging and induced friction have shown promise. Even with a fully upskilled and aware population, the core structural problem will persist, social media platforms are designed to maximise engagement for profit. Until this business model shifts, algorithmic amplification and the risks associated will continue to promote content regardless of accuracy or potential for societal harm.