AN EVAN-HANDED PROGRAMME?

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Evan Davis will be on BBC1 tonight with a programme about immigration. The programme was previewed on this morning's Today by the man himself, and two guests. One was free-thinking Labour MP Frank Field, the other was Labour-supporting economist and keen advocate of economic migration Philippe Legrain of the L.S.E. (of course).

As well as praising Labour's record on the issue during the last thirteen years (and having a dig at the Tories) - and bashing the bankers for good measure - Mr Legrain, author of Immigrants, Your Country Needs Them, praised Evan's documentary: "I thought the programme was excellent." He continued, "It was balanced", but in what he went on to say he seems to have been using the word 'balanced' to mean 'supportive of my position': "It presented material that contradicted many of the scare stories and prejudice about immigration and I thought your conclusion, which is that Britain wouldn't be able to cope easily without its foreign workers, was just right."

Mr Field immediately picked Evan up on his figures, saying that the presenter's statement that "hundreds of thousands of motivated foreign workers" had come to work in Britain was a severe underestimate: "I mean it's not, as you suggested, hundred of thousands, it's been millions coming in."