Population Growth

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the implications for the United Kingdom of future world population growth.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, I am pleased to have the chance to raise this important topic. I do so with some trepidation, because it is an issue on which one can be misconstrued, misreported, misquoted and misunderstood. To avoid this, I will begin by saying what the debate is not about. This is not a debate about immigration under another name; it is not a debate about relative population sizes, and whether there are more white people or black people; it is not about the relative sizes of faiths, and whether there are more Christians, Jews or Muslims; it is not about the relative sizes of social classes, and whether there are more rich people or poor people; and finally, it is not about preaching or personal example, because I will put on the record straight away that I have four children. It is about the staggering absolute increase in world and UK population—hour by hour, week by week and year by year—and what this may mean for us, for our children and for our grandchildren. It is the elephant in the room of all our efforts, first, to relieve abject poverty; secondly, to offer people a decent standard of living; thirdly, to provide everybody with a reasonable chance of self-realisation and of fulfilling their talents, dreams and aspirations; and, finally, to avoid a possible final degradation of our world.

What is the size of the problem? The growth in world population peaked at 2.2 per cent in 1962-63. It is now between 1.1 and 1.2 per cent. That may seem a small number, but in absolute terms it meant that in 2009 the world's population increased by 74.6 million. This equates to an increase of 204,000 people per day. In the short hour of this debate, the world population will go up by 8,500. Is this not a declining figure? It is—a bit. Projections suggest that by 2050, the annual increase will have slowed to about 40 million—that is, 4,500 people per hour. I invite noble Lords to consider what even that reduced figure will mean for the need for housing, health, education, employment, resource use and the CO₂ footprint_. Because of this annual increase—whether it be 74.6 million or 40 million—the world's population will have increased in 2050 from 6.8 billion today to 9.2 billion then. That is a staggering increase of 35 per cent, or 2.4 billion people.

Some may be inclined to dismiss this as somebody else’s problem—other countries, other continents. However, not only would that be short-sighted, as I shall show in a minute, it would also not be true, for we in the United Kingdom also have a microcosm of the world’s population issue. In 1840, the population of the United Kingdom was about 10 million. In 2009, it was 62 million and is increasing by just under 400,000 a year—that is 45 per hour, or 45 during this debate.

Some may say that this is an immigration problem. Again, this would be short-sighted and, again, it would not be completely true. In 2008-09, of the 393,000 increase in the UK’s population, 217,000, or 55 per cent, came from a surplus of births over deaths. Immigration accounted for only 45 per cent, or 176,000. What makes this figure particularly alarming is that the figures for 10 years ago—2001-02—show that the net excess of births over deaths then was only 62,000 compared with 217,000 today, so there is a real non-immigration issue for the UK and its population.

But, people will argue, the real problem is overseas—particularly in Africa—and that is true. Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Sudan all have fast-growing populations. The argument goes: should we be concerned about the growth of population in these overseas countries? Some may say that there is a case for a moral duty—for us to help those who are less fortunate than ourselves—and I personally regard this as a powerful argument.

However, even for those who adopt a more laissez-faire, sauve qui peut approach, there are compelling arguments to be concerned. Impoverished people are desperate people, and desperate people do desperate things—for themselves and for their families. I am a member of the House of Lords EU Sub-Committee F, which is concerned with home affairs. Last year, under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Jopling, we looked at the operation of FRONTEX, the European border agency. The evidence that we received about the lengths to which people will go to reach Europe was truly alarming. Time does not permit me to go into detail but one example will suffice. It is clear that boatloads of refugees are prepared, once they reach the territorial waters of a European country, to sink their boat and risk drowning as a means of ensuring that they reach Europe and are not returned to their country of origin. As population rises, so will the number of people trying these desperate remedies.

Finally, there are those who argue that we need more young people to fund the pension provision and lifestyle of a population with a higher proportion of older people—a sort of gigantic Ponzi population scheme. Such people forget about the inexorable implications of compound growth. It has been calculated that such an approach will require the population of the United Kingdom to reach between 125 million and 150 million by the end of the century.

In recent years, there has developed the concept of “carrying capacity”. Carrying capacity, at its most basic, is about survival—how much food and water the population of the world needs to survive. One estimate is that in 1999 humanity’s demand exceeded the planet’s biocapacity to supply by more than 20 per cent. This excess is not immediately disastrous because biocapacity stocks can be run down or liquidated by things such as overfishing and deforestation, and indeed by filling up sinks—over-emitting CO₂ into the atmosphere. Further, nation by nation there can also be imbalances with countries exceeding the average carrying capacity, balanced by others which do not. However, for the world as a whole there is no such easy outcome, because we have as yet no possibility of interplanetary trade.

So much for the problems; what would I like the Government to do? First, I should like them to agree that population growth is an issue both abroad and at home, and that the taboo on even discussing this issue needs to be ended. We need, as someone has said, to “detoxify the brand”, for the people of this country are entitled to know about the seriousness of this challenge and its implications for them. Secondly, I should like the Government to disavow the idea that we need population growth to support our society. That way madness lies. Thirdly, we need to redouble our efforts to give women all over the world the power to control their fertility. That is why I believe that ring-fencing the foreign aid budget was such an important policy decision and likely to help to bring incalculable benefits at every level.

None of this will be easy. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, this is a complicated, uncertain, messy issue hedged about with traps. Those of us who cut our political teeth in the 1970s remember the example of Keith Joseph, whose political career was effectively ended by a speech on this subject. As Matthew Parris put it in a recent article:

“Joseph’s intentions, if not his words, were right. All the world over, a new generation of political leaders must return to this. Look beyond insulating your roof. Look beyond recycling your tins. Look beyond buying a charity goat for a Kenyan village for Christmas. It’s population, stupid”.