UK Population Growth

Lord Swire Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The analysis by the ONS does not go into that, but we have published the long-term workforce plan for the NHS, which has been accompanied by the largest ever injection into various things such as NHS scanners. Our plan is to recruit and train more doctors and nurses in Britain, which will be supported by over £2 billion over the next five years. Indeed, some of the immigration is NHS workers who have come to help the country deal with its problems.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

My Lords, one of the reasons we are told that we are witnessing record levels of net immigration—745,000 in 2022—is that there are currently 900,000 job vacancies in this country, but UK unemployment is at an almost record historic low of 3.8%. It seems to me that the problem is that there are now 5.6 million people in this country on out-of-work benefits and an alarming 4,000 new applications for those benefits every single day. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that that is neither desirable nor sustainable?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The figure for June 2023 was actually down to 672,000 people, but my noble friend is right to point to the problem of underemployment. The focus of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in changing the benefits system and helping people into work is to improve skills so that everybody in this country who can possibly do a job has one, because that is very much related to contentment and happiness—certainly in my own experience. It is a very important area of work that this Government have truly underlined.