6 in 10 babies in London born to foreign mothers

MORE than six in ten babies born in London hospitals have foreign mothers who are either immigrants or visiting from abroad, official figures show.

The evidence of the impact of immigration on the NHS was revealed in a breakdown of hospital records for last year published by the Office for National Statistics.

It comes amid concerns about the effects of fast-rising popula- tion levels and the cost to the public of health tourism. It also comes as the Health Service faces a shortfall of 3,500 midwives.

In one London hospital nearly four out of five births were to mothers born abroad, and in two the figure was over 70 per cent.

Across the country just over 28 per cent of babies in 2016 were born to foreign-born mothers, up from just over 11 per cent in 1990, according to the ONS. The levels are higher in London because a large proportion of migrant families settle in the capital.

The ONS figures show the hospital with the highest proportion of babies born to foreign mothers was Northwick Park in northwest London – they accounted for 4,031 out of 5,117 births .

At Newham University Hospital in East London the proportion of babies born to foreign mothers was 77 per cent, and at St Mary’s, Westminster, it was 71 per cent.

The ONS figures do not distin- guish between mothers who live in Britain and those who are visiting from abroad, who may fall into the category of health tourists.

Concern about health tourism and the cost to the NHS of treatment for people who are not entitled to free healthcare has been running high, and last month Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt instructed hospitals to identify and charge those who are freeloading on the Health Service.

London hospitals are among those taking part in a three-month trial in which patients may be asked to show proof of identity.

Alp Mehmet, of the campaign group Migration Watch UK, said: ‘To reduce these pressures we need to better manage migration.’

The latest figures reveal that as well as babies born in NHS hospitals, 14,767 of the 696,271 births in England and Wales last year were to mothers at home.

‘We need to better manage migration’

Another 3,365 were in ‘other places’, including private hospitals, locations en route to the hospital, as well as in care homes, schools or university halls of residence.

The new statistics on babies born to foreign-born mothers come after earlier figures from the ONS which showed that in some areas of London they account for more than three-quarters of births.

In the East London borough of Newham in 2014 more than three quarters of babies – 77 per cent – were born to mothers who were themselves born outside Britain.

In that year most of the foreignborn mothers who gave birth in the UK were from Poland, followed by Pakistan and India.

The 2014 figures showed immigrant mothers are more likely to be married than those born in Britain. Some 72 per cent of immigrant mothers were married that year, compared with 45 per cent of UKborn mothers. The ONS said this ‘ reflects different expectations between cultures’.

The rise in the number of babies with foreign- born mothers has partly come because fertility rates among immigrants are higher than those of British-born women.

Although fertility rates among foreign-born women fell in 2015, an immigrant could expect to have 2.08 children. For UK-born women, the rate was 1.76.