Phil Woolas has accused the Office for National Statistics of "playing politics" with population data.

The immigration minister has questioned the motives of the ONS in publishing figures showing one in nine UK residents were born abroad.

He described the decision to publish the data as "at best naive or, at worst, sinister" and admitted that he tried to prevent the data from being published.

Woolas expressed his anger in a letter to Sunder Katwala, general secretary of the left-wing Fabian Society.

He explained to the BBC this morning that he had been accused at a Fabian seminar of releasing inflammatory statistics.

But he said that the ONS figures were not his own and did not truly represent immigration statistics.

Woolas said most people thought that the government had released the data.

He wrote in the letter: "In fact, it was the ONS with no ministerial involvement and indeed despite my objections.

"What's worse is that the press release highlighted the one in nine figure as the main finding.

"So, government gets the blame by some for whipping up anti-foreign sentiment when it is the independent ONS who are playing politics.

"The justification from the ONS who had, out of schedule, highlighted the figure two weeks earlier because it was 'topical' is, at best naive or, at worst, sinister."

And he suggested that the one in nine people born abroad figure was not new or "informative".

But Woolas also stressed that the independence of the ONS was "important".

"It is the government that created the statutory framework," he told the BBC. 

"But the release of the one in nine of the population being foreign born, in the context of the immigration debate, I was criticised at the Fabian seminar for releasing inflammatory figures. But they are not my figures."

Woolas continued: "I think my problem with the issue is that the figures include the British nationals born overseas. It is not an immigration figure and yet it looks like that."

He explained that the ONS has released the figures based on the fact that they were "topical".

"But they have got to be very careful, in my view, that they don't enter what is the most inflamed debate in British politics," he warned.

"Releasing figures outside of the schedule because of the topicality maybe interpreted as influencing the political debate."

He also suggested that the view that the data would not be abused by people was "naive".

"And I think that the ONS should not release figures because they are topical," Woolas said.

"They should release them on the schedule so the journalists know what is coming and when. I am allowed a point of view, aren't I?

"If they want to be independent, quite rightly, then they should be subject to criticism."

He denied that he was intimidating the ONS, stating that he was just "expressing his point of view".

A spokesman from the ONS said that the organisation would "not be responding" to the comments.