UK Population Growth

Lord Green of Deddington Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The projections do not break the individual categories down in that way. They are, as the noble Lord probably knows, put together by expert panels and they are projections. They look quite a lot at the last 10 years, as well as at what else might be happening. I emphasise the point that they do not attempt to account for the impact of future policy changes.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, the figures show that immigration will account for 92% of our population increase in the next 15 years. That is five times the population of Birmingham, our own second-largest city. Furthermore, in the 20 years since the 2001 census, the Muslim population of England and Wales has more than doubled from 1.6 million to 3.9 million. These are very large numbers and, if that rate were to continue, it would surely have a considerable impact on social cohesion. When will the Government face up to the situation and take effective action to reduce the scale of immigration, which is having such a massive, unspoken impact on our society?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord. As I have explained, the Government are clear that the immigration figures are too high and have taken a series of actions, including stopping care workers bringing dependants, limiting the dependants coming in as the families of non-PhD or research-based students, changing the minimum income for family visas and increasing the earnings threshold. These changes will take time to have an effect, but the noble Lord is of course right to point to the changes that have happened over the last few years and produced an unacceptable situation.