One quarter of babies in Britain now born to foreign mothers
ONE in four babies born in the UK last year had a foreign mother, according to official figures which suggest that record numbers of migrants are now living in Britain.
Nearly 9 million people living in Britain last year, equivalent to one in eight, were born abroad, compared with just one in 11 a decade ago.
The figures revealed that up to three quarters of children born in some parts of the UK last year had foreign mothers. The figure was 76.5 per cent in Newham, East London, 62 per cent in Slough, Berkshire, and 56.4 per cent in Berkshire as a whole.
Poland has now become the most common overseas country of birth in the UK, overtaking India for the first time. The change highlights the impact of free movement after Eastern European nations joined the EU.
A total of 831,000 people born in Poland now live in
the UK compared with 795,000 people who were born in India. The number of Poles living in Britain is now eight times higher than it was in 2004.
The Office for National Statistics said that the huge rise in the number of foreign-born mothers was because of the impact of migration and the fact that they have higher levels of fertility than British-born women.
In the year to March, net migration ran at 327,000, slightly down on figures from last year but still more than three times higher than Theresa May’s target. The high levels of migration have been driven by a surge in the number of Romanians and Bulgarians coming to live and work in Britain, with the number rising from 51,000 to 61,000. The figures revealed that nearly half of the 179,000 EU migrants who came to Britain looking for work did not have a job when they arrived.
The Prime Minister has been warned against a kneejerk crackdown on immigration which could damage economic growth and strip firms of skilled workers.
The warning came amid reports that Mrs May is launching a drive to slash the number of immigrants, following official figures showing Tory net migration targets have once again been missed, remaining at near record levels. But her opponents reminded the Prime Minister of the Government’s own growth estimates requiring increasing imimigration until 2020.
Mrs May is considering plans to introduce visas for low-skilled workers in a bid to limit EU migration after Brexit, and is also preparing to bring in new curbs on non-EU citizens who come to the UK on student visas.
The ONS figures show that there were 192,227 live births to women born abroad last year.
Women born in this country had 505,588 children, according to the data covering England and Wales. In more than 30 areas, mainly in London and the South East, over half of babies had foreign-born mothers.
Elizabeth McLaren, a spokesman for the ONS, said: “The rising percentage of births to women born outside the UK is largely due to foreign-born women making up an increasing share of the female population of childbearing age in England and Wales.
“Part of the reason is that migrants are more likely to be working-age adults rather than children or older people. Higher fertility among women born outside the UK has also had an impact.”