Experts dispute claim that UK’s population will hit 70m in 2029
October 21, 2009 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
• ONS ‘assumes influx will continue at 2005-08 rate’
• Immigration has peaked after recession – thinktank
By Alan Travis
Migration experts have challenged new official projections that Britain’s population will hit 70 million by 2029, largely as a result of a future influx of people and births to foreign nationals in the UK.
Tim Finch, head of the Institute for Public Policy Research’s migration programme, said the Office for National Statistics projections published today assumed migration patterns over the next 10 years would mirror those of the last 10.
The ONS figures are based on the average pattern of migration into Britain over three years up to the middle of 2008, before the economic recession began to bite. “Early indications suggest that the peak of net migration, mainly from eastern Europe, has passed,” said Finch. “The next few sets of migration figures will suggest that inward migration is steadying and emigration is increasing. If that trend continues then some of the assumptions that net migration will go on and on that lie behind the projection of 70 million by 2029 may be wrong.”
The ONS projections show that the current UK population of 61.4 million would rise to 71.6 million by 2033, passing the 70 million mark by 2029. Should that happen it would be the fastest rate of population growth seen since the postwar baby boom, with the ONS saying it would mean adding a city the size of Bristol to the population each year.
But claims that a new “immigrant baby boom” are fuelling the rise appear wide of the mark. One in four babies born last year had non-British-born mothers. This partly reflects the younger age profile of recent migrants and the greater prevalence of women of childbearing age, and a higher fertility rate than among British-born women.
Statisticians say 55% of the 10.2 million projected rise over the next 25 years will come from a natural increase in births over deaths, and 45% will be due to more people coming to Britain than leaving.
The home secretary, Alan Johnson, said earlier this year that he did not “lie awake at night” worrying about the population hitting 70 million.
Guy Goodwin, of the ONS, stressed that the figures were not forecasts and did not “take account of new or future policy initiatives”. “Really, they’re just a benchmark that policy-makers and politicians can look at and say, ‘This is where we are heading if things continue very much as they are.’”
The projections are actually lower than the set published last year and are based on the immigration picture in 2006, 2007 and provisional figures up until the middle of 2008. The ONS has revised net migration downwards by 10,000 to 180,000 a year and projected that the 70 million mark will be passed a year later, in 2029, compared with last year’s projections.
Phil Woolas, the immigration minister, said the ONS projections showed that population growth was starting to slow and reforms that the Home Office had made to the immigration system over the past two years were working.
“Last year saw a 44% fall in net migration and we expect that fall to be sustained and reflected in future projections.”
The ONS also suggests the oldest age group is likely to grow the most quickly, with the number of Britons over 85 due to more than double over the next 25 years, from 1.3 million in 2008 to 3.3 million by 2033. The number of centenarians is due to rise from 11,000 to 80,000 by 2033.
Even taking account of increases in the state pension age, those qualifying for a state pension are expected to rise from 11.6 million in 2008 to 15.6 million by 2033.
New life expectancy figures confirm the north-south divide in Britain. Life expectancy is highest for men at 79.2 years in south-east England and for women at 83.1 in south-west England. It is lowest in Scotland, at 75 for men and 79.9 for women.
Life expectancy at birth has improved across the UK since the early 1990s, but while London saw an increase of 4.9 years for men, life expectancy for Scottish men rose only by 3.5 years.
A boy born this year in Kensington and Chelsea can expect to live for 84.3 years compared with only 70.7 years for a boy born in central Glasgow.
Perpetuating population paranoia
October 21, 2009 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
Projections of an increase in the UK’s population play into tabloid hands – it’s important to remember we can’t predict the future
By Tim Finch
In the week when the BNP’s leader, Nick Griffin, is due to appear on Question Time, the last thing we needed was some new fuel added to the fire of the immigration debate. So although it is only doing its job and being open with the public, the release of new population projections by the Office of National Statistics is not the most helpful contribution.
The projections suggest that the UK population will increase by more than 4 million in the next 10 years and will top 70 million by 2029. The ONS estimates that 45% of this increase will come from immigration, but also that migrants will contribute to a general population increase through an increased birth rate.
In fact, none of this is a great revelation. The ONS has been publishing similar numbers for some years and the latest figures come up with a slightly lower population increase then last year’s attempt at the same exercise. But even so, these are big numbers – and big numbers on immigration always spell trouble.
Already this week we have seen tabloid headlines designed to scare the public, based on some tentative estimates in an obscure government report on regional migration impacts. Now the government’s own statistical office will be quoted in support of those who argue that immigration is “out of control” and the Home Office “in chaos”.
Now, of course, the ONS isn’t deliberately setting out to cause public panic and to upset community relations, but its headline numbers will still do damage.
“The projections are not forecasts, and do not attempt to predict the impact that future government policies, changing economic circumstances or other factors might have on demographic behaviour,” says the ONS. But it’s the headline numbers that will do the damage.
What is vital to add to the projections (which, of course, we at IPPR would not dispute) is that they are based on estimated population numbers up to mid-2008 and on projecting the net migration rate of recent years into the future. In its press release, the ONS makes important provisos: “The projections are not forecasts, and do not attempt to predict the impact that future government policies, changing economic circumstances or other factors might have on demographic behaviour.” These are not small points, they are crucial.
For, since the ONS made these population projections, net migration has fallen quite dramatically – down by an estimated 44% during the whole of 2008. While it is important to be cautious – all of this is educated guesswork – the signs are that this drop was the first sign of a trend that will show immigration slowing and emigration increasing. Certainly, reliable figures show east Europeans have left in large numbers in recent months. And all this, of course, is a result of just the things the ONS says it didn’t take into account in its population projections – namely, government policies (they are tighter) other factors (in this case structural changes in European movements and, above all, the economic downturn.
So, simply put, the future doesn’t always look like the past, but the projections game only has the past up to a certain point to go on. It is an interesting exercise to project ahead and see where the numbers might end up. But it doesn’t give you a certain picture of what the future will hold. Net migration may remain high and contribute to significant population growth. For what it’s worth, we think the years of booming immigration are over and that numbers will settle down. We may be wrong. But so might the ONS.
Tim Finch an associate director and head of migration, equalities and citizenship at the Institute for Public Policy Research
Migration is not a crime, but the way it’s discussed is criminal
September 9, 2009 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
Source: Left Outside
Carl Packman has very nicely leap frogged from my post to a discussion on the limitation the left faces when discussing immigration. Nice enough for him this is now the second post of his which has been cross posted to LibCon, and as usual for posts on immigration it has incited a very “lively” discussion.
However, it is not the just the left which has difficulty discussing immigration. The right does too, because they just can’t help themselves distorting the truth or outright lying.
As I began to discuss here, talk about immigration in this country is tainted by decades, indeed centuries, of prejudiced stereotypes that are difficult to escape. Unfortunately some papers extend so little effort to escape this regrettable history that numerous blogs have been created to monitor them.
A lack of originality, a surplus of bile
What I want to create is a crib sheet for any article you see on immigration, migrants, refugees or asylum by looking at the history of that discussion. Our modern debate on migration has not developed out of a vacuum. In fact, we are forced to watch tedious reruns of discussions concerning Huguenots in the 1680s, Irish migrants in the early 19th Century and Eastern Europeans in the late, Jews in the 1930s and West Indians and South Asians in the 1960 and 70s. As Paul Gilroy describes in There Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack “the wearisome task of dissecting the rhetoric is not helped by its lack of originality: ‘they’ are taking our jobs and houses, using up local resources and undermining ‘our’ culture and, in return, offering ‘us’ disease and terrorism.” However, dissect it we will, again and again, until they fucking learn.
Any immigration story you read in the above papers will be shaped by the groundless assumptions under which the anti-immigrant polemicist operates. These do not pop out of thin air, they are drawn from the past. Pick an article; I will guarantee that it will contain a combination of the below:
The Disloyal Immigrant
This is perhaps the oldest argument of them all. It certainly dates back to the 17th Century. In Catholic France the Huguenots stood out as Protestants and in 1685 the Edict of Nantes was revoked and open season was declared on France’s heretics. They left France for more welcoming shores and arrived in England. [1]
They have since been co-opted as the “good immigrants;” those that integrated, brought valuable skills and blended seamlessly with the indigenous Anglo-Saxon-Norman-Norse-Roman-Celtic population. Those opposed to immigration often make disparaging comparisons with the Huguenots. [2]
In fact the Huguenots were subject to much the same treatment that welcomes modern day refugees, sometimes even worse. They could be subject to double the normal parish dues and national taxes. Petitions were organised against them and their daily lives a constant struggle. The Huguenot’s being refugees inhabited the poorest parts of town, and were soon charged with causing poverty. Even seeking it out in order to undercut the indigenous workforce. These most loyal of migrants were in fact treated like criminals.
This was repeated with each subsequent migration. The most interesting comparison can probably be drawn between Muslims and Catholics. In the early 19th Century the Great Reform Act was in the offing and there was much talk of how far suffrage should be extended. One key sticking point was whether Catholics should have the vote or not. The problem was that a Catholic’s ultimate loyalty was to the pope, not parliament; sound familiar?
The Ummah has been cited as a reason to distrust Muslim immigrants, Muslims in general in fact. This makes about as much sense as denying Catholics the vote, but it won’t stop some people parroting this argument. This is because the migrant must prove their loyalty, they are not innocent, they are guilty until proven otherwise. Even if no one knows guilty of exactly what.
Soft Touch Britain™
In the late 1990s William Hague accused New Labour of being “too soft” on immigration. This period saw a marked increase in the number of asylum applications received in the UK and was snatched upon by the press that Britain was being targeting for its benefits system and wide open borders. As early as 2001 the BBC were running myth debunking stories. In fact throughout Europe record numbers of Asylum Seekers were being received. The collapse of Yugoslavia will do that
Even as benefits have been slashed, this discussion has not ended. Even as Labour enacted five Acts on migration and asylum this discussion has not moved on. At the worst of the “asylum crisis” the numbers reaching Britain were comparable to Germany, France or Italy. Rather than being a “soft touch” Britain was finally receiving its fair share of refugees.
There are few things which make me feel patriotic, as a Socialist I’m sure that doesn’t surprise you. But one thing that makes me intensely proud of this country is that up until 1905 we had no immigration controls. None. Nada. Zip. The irony for the casual anti-immigrant-armchair-colonialist is that the height of Soft Touch Britain™ coincided with the height of Empire.
Diseased and sex obsessed migrants
Concentrating on health concerns, the language is unequivocal, “asylum seekers raising HIV risks.” The Times also contributed to the press personification of contemporary immigrants as carriers of disease with it’s that demands for HIV checks for all immigrants, to prevent “draining the resources of the NHS.”
Previously it has been Tuberculosis that has been the immigrants disease of “choice.” The update does nothing to hide the worrying trend to target migrants as a carrier of disease and instigator of national decay. Now from above you can tell the asylum seekers are going to give you AIDS. HIV is a scary illness, but a particularly had one too contract if your not going to share syringes or have sex with those infected.
This is of course irrelevant because the one that has been associated with migrants is sex: a very unBritish thing indeed. By threatening the local population with HIV The Mail and The Times very effectively demonise asylum seekers as either promiscuous or drug users or both.
The links to sexualised black and asian immigrants or the Opium dens of past Chinese immigrants are plain to see; and about as well founded. There is a lot of could, may, might in those articles, and very little proof that migrants are infecting the “indigenous” population.
Criminal immigrants
It seems, shortly after loyalty, firmness, cleanliness and sexual inadequacy, the one thing we British pride ourselves on is our law abiding nature. Migrants, if we judge by the hysterical historical record, are anything but law abiding. The same that was true of anti-Jewish agitation in the 1900s is true today; the lies remain the same too.
Likewise, in the 1970s it became “common sense” that criminality was a distinct way of expressing “Black Culture,” whether it was a Rastafarian smoking marijuana or a black youth mugging someone. Although these crimes were certainly committed by members of this “immigrant group,” this was not in any proportion to the dominance that this issue had in the 1970 and 1980s.
The obsession with crime and the durability of its images are a focus for discussions on national decline. More than that, they are a way of articulating a crisis of national confidence totally separate from the crimes and criminals themselves. After all, the tumult of the 1970s and 1980s had little to do with race.
Lump of Labour/Housing/Hospitals/Women Fallacy
Yes the Jews/Irish/Blacks/Asians/Chinese/Asylum Seekers are taking your Job/House/Woman/Healthcare [delete as applicable]. This theme is no doubt familiar to you.
The economics of migration are fairly clear. Even Migration Watch UK and the infamous James Slack admit that migrants benefit the UK’s economy. It is instructive that the worst claim they can create, using the most miserly figures, is of a modest benefit. The NHS would collapse without migrant labour and it would never have started without the tremendous work of West Indian nurses in the 1950s.
Similarly, the Lump of Labour Fallacy is often displayed when people argue that immigrants are “stealing” jobs. The jobs and wealth created by immigrants, from Huguenot Weavers to Jewish Cabinet makers to Bangladeshi caterers, is ignored.
Although the immigrant “stealing” theme is a fairly large one I will only pass over it briefly, it is so common as to be particularly irritating. I would like to conclude this short section with a personal gripe; by asking those arguing that immigration in the last decade has made housing less affordable: How would reducing the numbers of builders, plasters, plumbers and electricians in this country make it easier to build a house?
Swamped
Perhaps behind all of this is the idea of being “swamped.” Whether on an individual level, like the little old lady in Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech, or on a national level, like the paranoia that created this article, swamping is pervasive to discussions of immigration.
Of course over the last couple of thousand years these islands have absorbed millions of migrants, and a sense of continuity has remained. In the 1680s in a matter of years fully 1% of the population became Huguenot, it sounds like a small number, but far smaller increases cause massive ripples today. These Huguenots have become British.
The same swamping was seen by Powell in the 1960s…
Sometimes people point to the increasing proportion of immigrant offspring born in this country as if the fact contained within itself the ultimate solution. The truth is the opposite. The West Indian or Asian does not, by being born in England, become an Englishman. In law he becomes a United Kingdom citizen by birth; in fact he is a West Indian or an Asian still.
…and by Major Evans Gordon of Jews in East London in the 19th Century…
East of Aldgate one walks into a foreign town. [The modern englishman lived] under the constant danger of being driven from his home, pushed out into the streets not by the natural increase of our own population but by the off-scum of Europe
It wasn’t true in the 17th century, nor in the 18th, nor in the 19th, nor in the 20th. The 21st century is certainly no different. But this “swamping” theme will be repeated ad nauseam, unless we challenge it.
Immigrant Bingo
Now we have tackled those basic assumptions we can move onto the language and imagery which is used. These can be used to spot which of the above ignorant preconceptions are the inspiration for the article you are reading. They are like a tell that a poker play just can’t hide. And they also make for an excellent bingo game. Cards at the ready:
I’m not going to argue that because some of the arguments descend from xenophobic drivel that they are essentially racist; I’m sure sometimes it is just coincidence. What offends me is the acceptance that this is the best way to discuss immigration. That the above assumptions form the basis for any discussion on immigration in our press or parliament would be a colossal national disgrace if things were not worse elsewhere.
This could be a fairly dry essay on the history of our national debate on migration. I have several thousands words written on the subject and just two thousand of the multitude are here. But just illustrating the pattern and repetition of the same tedious lies and distortions is not enough. We need to be able to combat it. This post is meant to provide people with a tick list to check and a way to say, “actually that was bollocks then and it’s bollocks now.”
[1] As an aside, there is a mosque on Brick Lane that used to be a Huguenot church. Later it became a Methodist chapel and later still a Synagogue, before finally becoming the Mosque you find there now. With each new migration migrants find their niché.
[2] In the same way, modern asylum seekers are castigated as being less deserving than the Jews fleeing Nazism, despite this being manifestly untrue.
HAT News is not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author’s alone.
Balancing Britain’s population
August 29, 2009 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
To stabilise our population at 65m we must get immigration into balance with emigration.
By Frank Field
The UK’s population has now hit 61m and is growing twice as fast as in the 1990s and three times as fast as in the 1980s. On present forecasts the UK will hit 77m in 50 years’ time and will outnumber France and even Germany.
Will it ever happen? Long term population forecasts are notoriously unreliable but, at the 20-year range, the Office for National Statistics has been accurate to within 2.5% in the past half-century. Its present forecast is 70m in 2028 and must, therefore, be taken seriously.
It is important to disentangle the two major influences: birth rates and immigration.
The birth rate in England and Wales is now 1.96 children per woman, close to the replacement rate of 2.1. This is partly due to immigration since women born outside the UK have 2.51 children on average compared to 1.84 for UK-born women.
Last year, for the first time in many years, natural change (births minus deaths) exceeded net immigration. But the full effect of immigration over, say, a 20-year period must take account of the children of those immigrants. A more sophisticated calculation of this kind shows that immigration accounts for nearly 70% of population growth.
It follows that immigration policy is critical to the future size of our population and is, of course, the only aspect of population growth that the government can directly influence.
Everyone agrees that we need some international migration to provide skills unavailable in Britain, at least until British workers have been trained. But what really matters for the population is how many people stay on and settle. The government’s recent proposal to split economic migration from settlement is a major step forward.
But much more needs to be done. Net immigration must be brought below 50,000 a year if the population of the UK is to be held at less than 70m. If we want to stabilise our population at 65m we must get immigration into balance with emigration. That is the target of our Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration.
There is still a long way to go. Yesterday’s figure of 118,000 net inflow was the raw data from the International Passenger Survey. The ONS will make adjustments to this for asylum seekers and those who change their intentions. These normally add 35,000 to the total so even in a deep recession we have net immigration of about 150,000.
There is no silver bullet to achieve the reduction we need. The first step is for both main political parties to commit themselves to restraining our population by limiting immigration and then building the necessary measures around it. This was the recommendation of the Select Committee on Economic Affairs of the House of Lords who reported in April 2008. We think that is the right approach and strongly commend it.
UK population now more than 61m
August 27, 2009 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
The UK population has passed 61 million for the first time, according to the Office for National Statistics.
There were 408,000 more people living in the UK in 2008, taking the population to 61.4 million.
For the first time in almost a decade, changes in birth and death rates have overtaken immigration as the biggest factor affecting population growth.
Overall migration levels – the numbers of people arriving minus those leaving – fell by 44% to 118,000.
This is the lowest level since EU enlargement.
The ONS said this latest increase in population was the biggest in nearly 50 years.
In 1962 the population rose by 484,000 and in 1947 population levels rose by 551,000.
There are now 1.3 million people aged over 85, a record number, who make up 2% of the total population.
There were 791,000 babies born in the UK last year, an increase of 33,000 on 2007, and a figure which is almost twice the rise recorded at the start of this decade.
The population is now growing by 0.7% every year, more than double the rate in the 1990s and three times the level of the 1980s.
‘Strong borders’
Border and Immigration Minister Phil Woolas said:”The fall in net migration is further proof that migrants come to the UK for short periods of time, work, contribute to the economy and then return home.
“Our new flexible points-based system gives us greater control on those coming to work or study from outside Europe, ensuring that only those that Britain need can come.
“Britain’s borders are stronger than ever before. Our border controls in northern France are stopping record numbers of migrants reaching our shores – 28,000 in 2008.
“The British people can be confident that immigration is under control.”
But shadow immigration minister Damian Green said: “These figures show our population is still rising fast, even when the recession is driving hundreds of thousands of people to leave.
“This puts added pressure on housing and transport, and shows that there is still no proper control over immigration numbers.”
Scaremongering
Tim Finch from the left-leaning think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, said migration flows go in cycles.
“It is now declining sharply – almost certainly because of a combination of the economic downturn, the short term nature of much migration from new EU countries, and the impact of stronger controls put in place by the government.
“There has been a lot of irresponsible scaremongering about immigration in recent years which was based on the false assumption that high migration was inevitable for years to come.”
But a group of MPs, the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration, said the population would continue to grow by millions of people.
The Labour MP Frank Field and Tory Nicholas Soames issued a joint statement, saying the fall in net migration may well be temporary.
“Even at the present level of immigration, we are still on target for the UK’s population to exceed 70 million within 25 years,” they said.
“There are no laurels to rest on. The need for firm measures on immigration is unchanged. The public clearly understand this.”
Donna Covey from the Refugee Council said the government had to keep the door open to genuine asylum seekers.
“We must make sure that the focus on strengthening Britain’s borders does not prevent people fleeing for their lives from getting to safety here in the UK,” she said.
Migrants to get bonus if they live in Scotland
July 27, 2009 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
By Michael White
Immigrants who want to become British citizens will win bonus points if they go to live and work in Scotland, where the population is ageing, Jim Murphy, the Scottish secretary, announced today.
A draft Home Office consultation paper, due shortly, on the government’s new policy of “earned citizenship”, singles out the fact of “having lived or worked in a part of the UK in need of increased population [such as Scotland]” as a point worthy of “favourable treatment”.
The credit of living in Scotland will rank alongside skills in short supply, as well as special talents, in science or the arts, and a “proper attitude” towards the adopted country.
Writing in Scotland on Sunday, Murphy reminded fellow Scots that their average age was now 45 – “almost four years older” than his age – and that such a demographic profile put pressure on the welfare state and on future competitiveness.
Scotland’s population has shown a slight increase, from 5,057,400 in 2003 to 5,168,00 last year, and a better-performing economy under devolution has started to reverse decades of outward migration. But Murphy said: “Our need for a growing population is ranked alongside the need to recruit to occupations where we have a shortage.”
He added: “Over the summer we will be consulting on this new points-based route to citizenship, and I am pleased to say living and working in Scotland is proposed as one way to earn points.
“The new Scotland should be a melting pot, embracing long-established immigrant communities from Ireland and Italy, as well as more recent arrivals from the Indian sub-continent and young eastern Europeans. They’ve changed us for the better and widened our horizons.” – Guardian
Immigrant population rose by 21% in just four years, official figures show
March 26, 2009 by Webmaster · Leave a Comment
By Martin Beckford|The Daily Telegraph
In some areas of the country the foreign-born population increased by a third after millions of Eastern Europeans earned the right to live and work here after their homelands joined the European Union.
More than 1 million people moved to the UK between 2004 and 2007, attracted by the strong economy and the easy availability of low-skilled jobs that Britons did not want to take.
But now it is feared their presence could lead to rising levels of hostility and an increase in support for far-right political groups, as the recession leads to greater competition for scarce work.
The changing make-up of Britain’s population was disclosed in the latest edition of Population Trends, published by the Office for National Statistics.
Its analysis of the Annual Population Survey showed that the numbers of people living in the UK who were not born here rose by 21 per cent between 2004 and 2007, from 5.2 million to 6.3 million. This is an increase equivalent to the population of Birmingham.
Much of the increase came from residents of the “A8″ countries that joined the EU in May 2004 – the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.
Of these, two thirds were Polish, making Poland the third most common country of birth for immigrants living in Britain, after India and the Republic of Ireland.
Most of the new arrivals settled outside of the south of England, with the east of the country seeing a 34 per cent rise in its non-UK born population and both the north west and east midlands recording 32 per cent increases.
In London, which has long been home to immigrants from all over the world, one in three residents was born abroad by 2007. In the boroughs of Westminster and Brent, there are more foreign-born people than Britons.
Meanwhile, some areas have seen large decreases in their populations of native Britons, including Birmingham (a fall of 4 per cent), Surrey and Sheffield.
The ONS said: “The size of the non-UK born population is increasing while the UK-born population has remained mostly constant.
“This increase is in part due to the accession of the A8 countries in 2004 to the European Union, and also from the large numbers of people resident in the UK from countries such as India and Pakistan.
“Many places in the UK have seen the size of their non-UK born population increase and their UK-born population decrease.”
The ONS analysis comes just weeks after it became embroiled in a row with Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister, over its data. He accused the independent body of “sinister” motives by highlighting figures showing that by 2008, almost one in nine British residents (6.5m) was born abroad.
He further fuelled the row yesterday when he told MPs he was “furious” at the time. Chairman of the Commons Public Administration Select Committee, Tony Wright, told Mr Woolas he had “crossed the line” by attacking the statiticians, while the National Statistician, Karen Dunnell, said it was “not helpful” for ministers to intervene in such a way.
