The UK’s Demographic Future

Lord Green of Deddington Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, on securing this debate. He has been consistent and courageous in drawing public attention to the very serious consequences that will flow from continued immigration on anything like the present scale. His opening speech was masterly and, of course, I agreed with it all.

For my part, I have been engaged in these matters for nearly 25 years: that was with Professor David Coleman of Oxford University. Together, we set up Migration Watch in 2001, with a view to getting wider understanding of the challenges of large-scale immigration. That work is now being taken forward by Alp Mehmet, a retired British ambassador born in Cyprus.

Today I will focus on just three points. First, the continued chaos in the asylum system has been and continues to be damaging to public confidence in the capability and even the integrity of successive Governments. Many members of the public simply do not understand how we have failed to deter or prevent the arrival of many thousands of asylum seekers. They are right. The current legal framework for asylum has failed and needs to be replaced, but that is a very complex matter for another day.

My second point is about the sheer scale of legal migration, which tends to get forgotten while much of the press talks about asylum. It is ridiculously high, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, described it. Over the last four full calendar years, net migration has totalled—I stress—about 3 million. In round numbers, we have been seeing levels of 500,000 in one year, 1 million in the next year, 1 million in the next year, and 500,000 in the fourth year. It is astonishing. If anyone had told you this five years ago, you would have dismissed it as just not possible to achieve. One wonders how the Government of the time made such a mess of it. As for the current calendar year, net migration looks like being about 200,000, but the reasons for that are not yet clear.

It is indisputable that the Conservative Party lost control of the numbers. Serious steps are now needed, and soon, to tackle this. So far, there has been little sign that the Labour Government have understood just what is required. The Home Secretary has spoken well; let us see whether she can get it put into action.

Thirdly and lastly, let us be clear: immigration cannot be allowed to continue at anything like the current levels. It now poses an existential threat to the UK. It is sowing the seeds of division and undermining the cohesion built up over centuries, and it is rapidly changing the nature of our society. Indeed, it is hard to believe that this matter is not already recognised as a national crisis. These words from Matthew Syed of the Sunday Times sum it up:

“The utter failure to control borders was not an expression of democracy but its greatest modern betrayal—and it will reverberate decades into the future”.


That is someone of Pakistani origin, born in Britain. He can see it and he will say it. Other people see it, but not enough people say it.

The effect of these developments depends on the assumptions being made about future net migration and the birth rates of different communities. It will be fair to say that, on reasonable assumptions, the white British population of England will become a minority in about 35 years’ time. This is based on net migration of less than 200,000 over the coming years. Obviously, nobody knows how this will turn out, but it is surely clear that we need serious action, consideration and study, and serious moves have to be taken: otherwise, we will muddle our way into growing social difficulties.

The public have never—I stress—been consulted about this very serious issue. However, the writing is on the wall. It is high time that our leaders read it and took serious and consistent measures to get immigration sharply down and keep it down.