Migrants to drive UK population to 73m by 2041

ONS expects 11.1pc growth in residents over the next 25 years, with no account taken of Brexit

MIGRATION will account for three quarters of population growth over the next 25 years as the number of people living in the UK rises to 73million.

Official forecasts show the UK’S population will rise by 7.3million people between 2016 and 2041, equivalent to 11.1 per cent. It will hit 70million by the end of the next decade. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that the rise will be driven by migration, including growing numbers of babies born to foreign parents.

The figures take no account of the UK’S decision to leave the EU.

Andrew Nash, of the ONS Population Projections Unit, said: “Because migrants are concentrated at young adult ages, the impact of migration on the projected number of women of childbearing age is especially important over this period.

“International migration to and from the UK before the projection base of 2016 will also influence future population growth, in the sense that past migrants and their descendants will contribute to the projected numbers of birth and deaths.”

Lord Green of Deddington, chairman of Migration Watch UK, said that net migration had averaged 250,000 a year for the past decade. The ONS has projected that net migration will be 165,000.

He said: “The immigration assumption of 165,000 underlying the principal projection is extraordinarily low. This is serious because it will lead to inadequate planning for housing, schools, hospitals and infrastructure – as, indeed, we have seen in recent years.”

Over the next decade the population is projected to grow by 3.6million. The growth rate is highest in England, on almost 6 per cent, with about 3 per cent in Scotland and Wales and 4 per cent in Northern Ireland. The figures suggest that the population of the UK will rise by more than those of Scotland and Northern Ireland combined.

The UK’S population could also grow significantly more than other major EU nations. According to separate figures from Eurostat, the UK’S population will increase by 16 per cent between 2015 and 2040. By contrast France’s population will grow by 10 per cent, Germany’s by 4 per cent and Italy’s will decline slightly.

However, the scale of the increase is less than previously forecast in 2014. The ONS lowered its assumption for net annual migration from 185,000 to 165,000 and reduced the average number of children per woman from 1.89 to 1.84. It is also suggesting life expectancy for men will fall from 84.3 to 83.4 years and for women from 87.1 to 86.2 years.

Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics at King’s College London, said: “There will be an increasing proportion of migrants of child-bearing years, and babies born to migrants will account for an increase in the overall numbers of children.

“We have seen an increase in the number of children with one or two parents born abroad for a long time.”

Demography is destiny, and in the next quarter of a century, Britain’s population will hit 72.9 million. The Office for National Statistics says that there will be a huge increase in the number of pensioners, from 12.4 million to 16.3 million. It’s excellent news that people are living longer, but these projections transform many of the country’s rather academic debates about infrastructure and welfare into serious challenges that need to be addressed as soon as possible.

Technology will help: in years to come a great many tasks currently performed by human carers will be done by robots. As for the cost of care, the Government has to find a formula that fairly shifts some of the burden from the taxpayer to the individual and their family. New markets in pensions and old age insurance need to be created and encouraged. Britain is still paying the price for Gordon Brown’s raid on the private pensions market when he was chancellor.

But this is also about building strong families. Some people choose not to look after their elderly relatives, which has social consequences for all of us. Others would like to, but cannot afford to do so. If, for instance, a son or daughter moves from the North to the South in search of work, the cost of relocating the relatives they have left behind is exorbitant: southern prices make it nigh-on impossible. The lack of affordable homes is therefore a tragic example of how the problems facing the elderly are often exactly the same as the problems typically associated with the young.

There is no generational war, even if the Left tries to stoke one; just the consequences of a lack of imagination and action in policy. Britain needs to invest in its future now.