Field hits out over immigration levels

Published on Saturday 25 April 2009 20:00

THE United Kingdom will have to build one house every six minutes, day and night, seven days a week for the next 20 years to meet the current scale of immigration, Labour MP and former minister Frank Field warned yesterday.

He said immigration would account for 70% of population growth in the next 20 years – that is seven million, or seven times the population of Birmingham. In 2007, immigrants were arriving at the rate of almost one every minute.

Field, MP for Birkenhead, issued his stark warning in an article in parliament's The House Magazine.

He recalled that he and Tory MP Nicholas Soames had established a cross-party group on balanced migration, designed to stimulate and inform a non-partisan and calm debate about the issue.

"For many years, probably a generation, immigration has been a no-go area to British politics. 'Racist', 'Little Englander', 'xenophobe' – those who have raised the subject have been insulted, abused and, all too often, silenced."

Field went on: "The beneficiaries of this have been the extremists, lurking in the wings, eager to piggyback on the public's concern for their own despicable ends. The losers have been the citizens of this country."

He said that over the past few years immigration had reached unprecedented levels. "Net migration – the number of people coming to the UK minus the people leaving – has more than quadrupled since 1997."

In 2007, 502,000 migrants arrived in the UK – almost one every minute, Field said. "Our population is officially projected to reach 70 million by 2028 and 80 million in mid-century, with immigration the main driver and the only one that the government can directly influence.

Field said that these projections were based on the Government's own net immigration assumptions. "But cold statistics do not paint the whole picture," he said.

"Delve beneath 'seven new Birminghams' and we see that in the next 20 years, one-third of projected household formations will be a result of immigration, meaning we will need to build 260 houses a day for the next 20 years to meet the requirement."

And he warned: "If the Government does not adopt the policy of balanced migration, or something close to it, our population is set to rise to a level to which the vast majority of people are strongly opposed. They are not opposed to immigration or immigrants, but to the present scale of immigration, which is bound to have a negative aspect on life in Britain."