UK Population Growth

Lord Johnson of Marylebone Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The interesting thing about the fertility figure, which the noble Baroness rightly mentioned, is that it is partly about people delaying when they have children and partly linked to the factors that she mentioned, including housing. So a priority for us is attacking housing by making more housing available for young people, which is very difficult. The fertility rates are themselves a problem, but not one that is confined to the UK; I used to work a lot in Korea, where fertility rates are horrifically low.

[Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Con)]

Does my noble friend the Minister agree that international students make an enormous contribution to our knowledge economy and ideally should be included in our net migration statistics only when they indicate an intention to immigrate post study via the graduate route or via application to the skilled worker route, and should otherwise be thought of as temporary residents or tourists—as Canada and the US treat them—with whom they share many characteristics?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The figures are broken down in some of the analysis that has been done by the ONS. Of course, the ONS is independent and impartial, which is an important strength. On students, it is important that the number of dependants coming into the UK should be limited, although we do understand that those who are going to stay in the UK to do PhDs and so on need to have dependants contributing to our country and our economy.