The number of Britons hoping to emigrate in the near future has almost doubled in three years, a poll carried out by ICM for BBC Online suggests.

ICM interviewed a random sample of 1002 adults aged 18+, by telephone on 28-30th July 2006. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results were weighted to the profile of all adults.

54% said that they had already considered emigrating or would consider emigrating at some stage in the future with 37% citing better quality of life as the reason and 24% citing the cost of living. Young people were the most likely to want to leave, with a quarter saying they were hoping to live abroad.

Australia topped the list of preferred destinations specified by 40% of respondants, followed by Spain (31%), Canada (24%), New Zealand (22%) and the US (21%) (Some respondents quoted multiple destinations).

The Institute for Public Policy Research is carrying out a six month project to review Brits' attitude to emigration. "With several million UK nationals living overseas, we want to explore the size, nature and experiences of the British diaspora. We hope these findings will help the UK Government, business and civil society harness the economic and cultural potential of the diaspora. We also hope that such a project will help question some of the commonly-held assumptions about migration flows. The project is supported by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office." Said Catherine Drew, one of the project's organisers.

The BBC report commented that "The Foreign Office has funded the IPPR's research. Minister Lord Triesman said that government needed to know not only where people have gone - but also what this tells us about how people migrate in a globalised world.

'It's clear that more British people are going to live abroad,' said Lord Triesman. 'Up to 14 million Britons live overseas for at least part of the year. To deliver the consular services and assistance to which British residents overseas are entitled, we need more accurate information on how many there are, and where they are going. Recent events in Lebanon highlighted the importance of this.'"

A separate report from Spain’s National Institute of Statistics shows that 3.8 million of the country’s official population of 44.3 million are foreigners. This equates to 8.7% of the population - a huge rise on the 2.2% six years ago.

Of Spain's autonomous regions, the Balearic islands have the largest foreign population at 15.6% with Extremadura and Galicia y Asturias at the other end of the list with only 2.5% foreign residents.

The ICM Research website can be found at: www.icmresearch.co.uk

TheIPPR Brits Abroad Project website can be found at: www.ippr.org/research/teams/project.asp?id=2042&tID=85&pID=2042