King’s Speech

Lord Green of Deddington Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I take this opportunity to send my condolences to Igor Judge’s family. We were undergraduates together at Cambridge 60 years ago, and I shall of course be writing.

This has been a wide-ranging debate with some quite remarkable contributions from all sides. For my part, I intend to confine my remarks to a single topic: sadly, it is one that this House is rather reluctant to address, namely the sheer scale of current net migration and its very serious implications for the future of our country. The present Government have deliberately permitted immigration to increase despite all their promises to the contrary. They meanwhile seek to divert public discussion to cross-channel asylum seekers, a problem which they know also infuriates the public.

But the fact is that legal immigration is about eight or 10 times the scale of illegal immigration and now carries many serious risks for the future tranquillity of our society. All population growth now arises from immigration, which since 1995 has accounted for nearly two-thirds of additional households. Indeed, last year’s unprecedented net inflow of just over 600,000 has resulted in huge pressure on housing and many other fields. The consequences continue to fall particularly on the younger generation, yet the connection with immigration is practically never mentioned.

Looking ahead, if we assume that births continue at the rather low present rate, and even if overall net migration is reduced to, say, 450,000 a year—very high by historical standards—the population of the UK would increase in the next 25 years or so by about 11 million, to 78 million. On reasonable expectations, that would be the equivalent of building nearly 10 cities the size of our second largest city, Birmingham. That is absolutely massive in all respects: housing, roads, transport, the whole lot. Indeed, if this rate of immigration is allowed to continue, 50 years from now the white British could well become a minority in their own country. Indeed, unless migration, the chief determinant, falls considerably, something of this kind will be inevitable. In younger generations, that new situation would arrive sooner, and white British children would become a minority in UK state schools in 20 years or so.

As Prime Minister, David Cameron saw some of the dangers ahead. In 2010, he said:

“We cannot continue to permit vast numbers of people to come to the UK and tell them that they do not need to integrate … and maintain certain values and ideas that are at odds with British values”.


He was exactly right. Only last month, the commissioner for countering extremism said the following:

“Allowing people to maintain parallel lives in our communities, without being part of our communities, has produced and will continue to produce … people committed to … undermining our values. The hatred that we have witnessed in recent days … is not only a cause for alarm among the Jewish community. It must be a wake-up call for … all decent people”.


Surely the first step must be to reduce substantially the scale of immigration to the UK. Nothing else will persuade the public that migration is being brought under control, that the very serious pressure on housing and on so many other areas will be reduced, and that they will not find themselves living in an unfamiliar country.