The UK’s Demographic Future

Lord Faulks Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am delighted to take part in this valedictory debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts. He was one of my supporters when I was introduced into your Lordships’ House in 2010, and I have had the privilege of sharing a room with him ever since—although “sharing” may not be a totally accurate word. The accumulation of paper and the general air of industry in the room is attributable, I am afraid, to him rather than to me.

The noble Lord has been an exemplary member of your Lordships’ House, whether on the Opposition Front Bench or, as we have heard, as chair of committees, or as a Back-Bencher prepared to take on difficult subjects. Some may remember the debate over the Albert Hall, to which he brought such expertise and common sense. He kindly assisted me in our attempts to establish a register of beneficial ownership for the foreign owners of property in this country. Of particular relevance today, he has regularly drawn attention to the difficult and highly contentious topic of immigration. We will miss him very much as a popular Member of the House and as a voice respected on all sides of it.

This report, if that is the right word, is typical of the noble Lord. It provides reliable facts and statistics, and includes essays from a number of different perspectives. As the Library summary says, demographic changes and population growth due to migration could bring

“very special challenges for the UK”,

including “extreme” political parties. But the noble Lord does not make crude political points: rather, his report focuses on matters including the environmental impact of population growth, and provides, as he has told us, useful international comparisons.

My own view is that, as a country, we have been afraid to ask the fundamental question: are we entitled to decide who does or does not come here? We have certainly failed to answer that question. There is much to be gained, of course, by refreshing the country with new arrivals; there is also an economic case to be made. We have an excellent history of accepting refugees. What is more, the expression of any view that appears to oppose immigration can so easily attract allegations of racism. No wonder centre parties tend to duck these difficult questions.

Will our country be happier for the vast increase in population in recent years, almost entirely due to immigration? We have an economy that stubbornly refuses to grow, and a widespread sense that we simply cannot afford the additional cost of immigration. It is by no means the only cause of the problems we have, but it has contributed to a general malaise that reminds me of the late 1970s, when I was starting my career. Jim Callaghan announced that, if he were a young man, he would think of leaving the country. I was tempted. I may be wrong, but I think the majority of the population thinks that we should be able to control migration. The Brexit vote was very much influenced by the sense that, with freedom of movement, we were unable to determine who was allowed to come quite legally to live in our country. Since Brexit, we have had a different sort of migration, much of it in response to particular crises. But the emphasis politically has been on illegal migration. Legal migration, at least in theory, is something that a country should be capable of controlling, although there are huge practical challenges in doing so.

I accept that illegal migration is an imprecise term, in that many asylum applications succeed, and thus the asylum seeker can become a legal migrant. However, asylum seekers, with the departure of those seeking more friendly economic pastures, are now increasing in both absolute numbers and as a proportion of immigration as a whole. This Government and the last simply cannot escape the images of boats crossing the channel and our inability to stop them.

The failure to reduce numbers is significantly attributable to international law and our approach to it. We have a dualist system in this country, whereby international law is not binding on us at a domestic level unless we specifically incorporate it into our law. We generally do not do that, with the exception of the European Convention on Human Rights, which was incorporated in the Human Rights Act 1998. The debate about asylum seekers has focused very much on our international obligations, whether they emanate from the ECHR or the refugee convention, or even the rather elusive concept of customary international law.

The Home Secretary has recently made some quite pugnacious remarks about tackling illegal migration and ruled nothing off the table. How well this is going down with the Prime Minister and that human rights zealot the Attorney-General I do not know, but in my view, unless she tackles the primacy of our national law, as opposed to what are often international obligations fashioned in an entirely different context, she will never get control of illegal migration. The recent efforts to engage with the European Court of Human Rights are unlikely, I fear, to produce significant change—certainly not in the near future.

I return to my fundamental question: is Parliament sovereign? Can Governments say no? This report is a pertinent and sophisticated analysis of the consequences of mass migration, but I fear that much of the population may take the view that they are looking for rather less sophistication and that the next election will be characterised by some ugly exchanges. This will largely be the fault of centre parties for ignoring the reasonable concerns of the population. If that scenario eventuates, the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, in what I hope will be a long and happy retirement, could be forgiven for saying to himself ruefully, “I told you so”.