Immigration: Britain’s wake-up call

The new population projections are shocking. richard ehrman explains what they will mean

After years of gloom about our ageing and falling population, the latest government projections on the subject come as a bit of a shock. Over the next 25 years, the Office of National Statistics expects the British population to rise to 71million, from 60m today. After that, it is on course to hit 75m by mid-century.

To put this in context, the British population has risen by 15m since the end of the First World War, 90 years ago. Now we face the same again in half the time. And because we are not producing enough children to replace ourselves, most of this dramatic growth will be due to immigration.

Without immigration, the population in 2031 would be under 64m, according to the ONS. By 2050 it would probably fall back to around the current level.

Equally surprising is the way this has all crept up on us. Whitehall produces these

If we are going
to rely on immigrants to pay our pensions, we’ll need to build an awful lot of new houses

population projections every two years. In 1996, when the exercise was last done under the Conservatives, net immigration was assumed to average 65,000 a year. In 1998 that rose to 100,000, and today Labour expects net immigration of 190,000 a year for the foreseeable future - nearly treble the level anticipated when it came to office.

Allowing for 200,000 or more people who emigrate every year, we are talking about perhaps 400,000 arrivals annually, ad infinitum.

Population projections have proved wildly out in the past, so this latest version should be taken with a pinch of salt. But it should serve as a wake-up call, too.

If we are going to rely on immigrants to pay our pensions and do the jobs we don't want to do, we are also going to have to build an awful lot of new houses, roads, schools and hospitals to accommodate them.

Unfortunately, in demography there are no free lunches.