Immigration pressures

sir – Of course we need to build better housing, as the former Conservative leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch suggests (Comment, July 17).

But better should not just mean higher quality; it should also consider the importance of vernacular styles – the honey-coloured stone of the Cotswolds, the dark stone of Yorkshire and Lancashire, the black-and-white half-timbered homes of the Welsh Borders – in creating a sense of a community in which one has pride and to which one has an enduring connection.

It will be difficult to shift current policy, but it will be impossible unless we slow the rate of population growth in this country. As Mrs Badendoch says, this means bringing immigration down to a sustainable level.

Last year the Government issued about 950,000 residential permits. We can expect about 500,000 of those people to remain here permanently. This will require us to build 200,000 houses – plus associated infrastructure such as roads, schools and hospitals. And that will come before we can make any attempt to address the current backlog.

We all accept that the trade-offs associated with a growing or shrinking population are complicated, but the British people rightly expect their Government to be making a more concerted and reasoned attempt at planning for the future. A body such as the Office for Demographic Change, which I have proposed, would enable us as a nation to have those difficult conversations, by carrying out authoritative, independent, transparent, evidence-based research into the wider, long-term consequences of population change.

The alternative is to ignore the matter and hope that it will take care of itself. Future generations will not thank us for kicking an issue of such fundamental importance into the long grass. Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)

London SW1