United Kingdom: Future Demographic Trends

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on the United Kingdom of future demographic trends.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on taking two debates on the trot and, through her, I thank her officials very much for having taken the trouble to ring me to ask what issues I wanted to raise with her today.

Initiating a debate on population is to enter a minefield which all too easily deteriorates into an unattractive combination of finger-wagging preaching on the one hand and the denial of any challenges on the other. However, opinion research indicates that demographic trends are of great concern to the citizens of this country and, indeed, to the citizens of the world.

Perhaps I should begin by saying what this debate is not about. It 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 need to put on record straight away that I have four children. It is about the staggering absolute increase in the world and UK population hour by hour and what that 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 fulfilling their talents, dreams and aspirations; and, lastly, but not least, to avoid a possible final degradation of our world.

Today, in the more reflective atmosphere of your Lordships’ House, I hope we can discuss the extent of those demographic challenges and what if anything can be done about them. It has proved to be an issue that has been hard to raise in the past, in part because it is an extremely sensitive and personal matter, in part because past political efforts have exploded in the face of individuals—Keith Joseph’s political career was effectively ended by a single speech in Birmingham—and in part because of certain false alarms, such as that of Thomas Malthus and, more recently, Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book, The Population Bomb.

What is the position now? The annual growth in the world’s population is about 1.1% per annum. That may seem a pretty small percentage, but in absolute terms it means that the world population is increasing by more than 70 million a year. That is more than 200,000 every day of the year. In the hour and a half that this debate is supposed to last, the world’s population will have increased by 13,000 people. “But”, I hear people ask, “is this rate not projected to slow down?”. Yes, it is a bit. Median projections suggest that by 2050 the world’s population will be increasing by only 40 million per annum, or 7,000 more people during a debate of this length.

Whatever the increase, whether it is 70 million or 40 million, I invite the House to consider what that will mean for the need for housing, health, education, employment and resource use. Either way, the world’s population is projected to increase from 7 billion today to 9.2 billion in 2050. Thomas Malthus was worried about food shortage. He overlooked an equally important precious resource: water. The UN’s best estimates are that the planet can provide water for a maximum of 9.5 billion people so, by 2050, we shall be at that limit. That figure is based on the assumption that the people are where the water is—probably a false assumption. We need to remember that all projections about population have an error range; 9.2 billion is the median. The top of the range is 11 billion. What about water then?

After that litany of despair, what can be done? First, we must avoid seeing it as someone else’s problem. Desperate people do desperate things. We may think that times are tough here in the United Kingdom at present, but for a starving man with a starving family in an unstable country, this is El Dorado, and desperate people will find ways to get here. Efforts to provide a degree of stability and prosperity—a prosperity modest by our standards—are critical. I hope that the Government’s overseas aid budget will continue to target those failed or failing states. The single most important step to help slow the population explosion is to ensure that every woman has control over her own fertility. For a whole host of personal reasons, most women seek to limit the number of children they have. It would be helpful if, when my noble friend replies, she can reaffirm the UK’s commitment to provide contraceptive advice and guidance and tell the House what progress has been made and what the targets are for the next few years.

That brings me to a difficult issue, about which I have given my noble friend’s office advance warning. After this debate appeared on the Order Paper, I was made aware of a group of Catholics calling themselves Catholics for Choice—I am not a Catholic, by the way—who wanted to raise the position of the Vatican at the United Nations. In short, they ask, “Is it a religion or is it a state?” They point out that no other religion has a comparable position in world affairs, and if it is a state, the briefing they have sent me points out that it is an unusual one. It has only 594 residents, all of whom are citizens of other countries. Of those 594, only 100 are women and it is estimated that there are no more than 10 children in residence at any given time.

The briefing that the group sent me went on to outline how the Vatican switches between these roles. Thus, at last week’s Women’s Conference at the UN in New York, the Catholic Church claimed observer status because it was a religion but reserved the right to participate in UN discussions because it was a state under the title of the Holy See. Given the Catholic Church’s deep-seated hostility to giving women control over their fertility, this issue is not going to go away, and I look forward to hearing the Government’s views on it.

In the rest of my remarks, I want to turn to the no less challenging position of the United Kingdom. The population of the UK is now over 63 million people. The 2011 census revealed that in the 10-year period 2001-11, the population of England and Wales increased by 3.7 million people, an increase of 7.1%, which is the fastest rate of growth since the first census in 1801. The ONS mid-range projections suggest that the UK’s population will continue to increase and will reach 70 million by 2027—another 7 million people. What do 7 million people look like? The city of Manchester has 500,000 people in it, so think of 14 Manchesters. If you want to take the larger Manchester conurbation, including Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan, which together have a population of more than 2 million, then think of three of these. Maybe we are going to have to build three Greater Manchesters by 2027.

There is a further complication. It is not just that England is already the sixth most densely populated country in the world—after Bangladesh, Taiwan, South Korea, Lebanon and Rwanda—but that the population is not spread evenly across the country. The bulk of the population increase will surely take place in the south-east, where we will probably have to build two out of those three Greater Manchesters

What is to be done? “Stop immigration” is a popular cry. That would make some difference but perhaps not as much as one might think. The Migration Observatory at Oxford University has pointed out that with 100,000 migrants per annum—the Government’s target—the population would reach 70 million in 2035, but with zero migration it would be 66 million—a difference of 4 million. On the other hand, those who say, “Unless we have more young people we cannot afford to look after our existing old people”, have forgotten the implications of compound interest. We would be engaging in, to quote Sir David Attenborough, a gigantic population Ponzi scheme. We have to recognise that at some point we have to achieve a stable, balanced population of this country. There will be considerable strains during the transition phase, but at some point someone somewhere must be brave enough to state this fact and to withstand the misinterpretation, misconstruction, misreporting and misquotation that will surely follow. To inform the general public in a balanced, unsensational way, we need an authoritative body to undertake the necessary research and writing. Population affects every government department—think of the impact of building three Greater Manchesters on every aspect of government—yet population is the responsibility of none. A useful first step in analysing this exceptionally complex problem could be to create a new Minister, or add to the duties of an existing interdepartmental one, to take responsibility for this issue.

To conclude, whatever one’s views of this issue, surely we must all agree with Sir John Sulston, who is leading a study of global population for the Royal Society, when he said that the target should not be to cram as many people as possible on to the planet. He went on to say:

“We have to look at what will allow humankind to flourish. We want to aim for a high quality of life and not just to scrape along”.

Future generations deserve no less.