Neil O’Brien is the MP for Harborough, and is a former Minister at the Departments of Health and Levelling-Up.
Until recently, Britain was a country of net emigration. But after 1997, the number of people arriving started to accelerate dramatically. And since the new immigration system came into effect in 2021, numbers have accelerated even further, reaching unprecedented levels.
Over the last decade, 9 million people moved to the UK, and 5.7 million left, meaning that net migration added 3.3 million to the population. Data from the last census suggests even greater levels of churn, with just under seven million people in England and Wales saying they had arrived in the UK between 2001 and 2021, or nearly a thousand extra people a day.
Immigration on this scale is very often presented as an unalloyed good for the economy. On one level, this is correct: a larger workforce will lead to higher GDP, all else being equal.
However, many cheerleaders for the sort of large-scale immigration we’ve seen in recent years like to go one step further and claim that it is a massive boost for living standards too – rocket fuel for the economy.
In some circumstances, with the right immigration mix, this might very well be so. However, it is far from obvious that this has been the case for Britain in recent decades. Since 1998 – when net migration passed 100,000 for the first time ever – GDP per capita growth has averaged just 1.2 per cent, barely half of the trend rate across the previous four decades.
If large-scale, relatively low-skilled migration has been great for the living standards of British residents, it doesn’t seem to be showing up in the data. While immigration can undoubtedly be enriching in many ways, the promised economic benefits have not materialised.
And yet in policy circles, the idea persists that mass migration must be making us all better off.
In part, this is probably because the social and economic impacts of immigration are so unevenly spread. While some parts of the country have seen very little change as a result of migration, elsewhere it has been massive and very rapid. The 2021 census showed that there were 114 shires and coastal districts where less than 5 per cent of the population had arrived since 2001, but also 29 districts – mostly London boroughs and a few other cities – where more than 25 per cent of residents have arrived within the last 20 years.
You do not need to be particularly sceptical about the benefits of migration to think that the rates seen in recent years have been far too fast. Although annual net migration is forecast to slow a little, it is projected to remain at historically unprecedented levels – 30 per cent above the 2010-19 average by the end of this decade.
But the world of Westminster can take a long time to catch up with the facts on the ground – especially when those facts are changing so rapidly. And this is creating a corrosive democratic deficit.
In every general election since 1992, the winning party has promised tight control, and, in every election since 2010, to actively reduce overall migration. The democratic problem arises from the fact that having made such promises, politicians have then gone on to break them – over and over again, for 30 years.
That is why in Taking Back Control, a new paper published by the Centre for Policy Studies, Robert Jenrick, Karl Williams, and I have sought to recast the immigration debate.
This is partly about highlighting the effects of the sheer scale and pace of migration. As immigration-driven population growth outpaces our ability to build enough houses, roads, railways, grid capacity, and GP surgeries, our capital stock is diluted. Prices rise, queues lengthen and congestion builds.
But it’s not just about the scale of change. It’s also about reframing how we approach migration policy. Too often, the immigration debate in the UK devolves into a question of whether migration is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. We should be asking: ‘Immigration of who, under what circumstances, and to what end?’
As we show throughout the paper, Britain has failed to prioritise the kinds of immigrants who would do most to benefit existing residents and so help to offset pressures created by rapid population growth. Indeed, some of the key routes that were meant to alleviate pressures in the care sector, or make us a home to the best and brightest students, have become backdoor routes into low-paid labour – ‘Deliveroo visas’.
Some people seem to think that regardless of the big picture, immigration is the only thing keeping the economy ticking over right now. But out of net migration of two million non-EU nationals over the last five years, only 15 per cent came principally to work.
On top of this, there are massive variation between migrant groups. For example, Indian migrants typically earn around 70 per cent more than migrants from Bangladesh, but roughly 15 per cent less than migrants from America. Working-age migrants from the Middle East are twice as likely to be economically inactive as someone born in the UK. A migrant from North Africa is three times as likely to be living in social housing as a migrant from Kenya.
Unlike many European countries, however, we can’t yet easily conduct the sort of life-cycle fiscal analyses of different groups of migrants that would allow us to construct a rigorously selective immigration system of the sort we need. Whitehall does seem to hold much of the relevant data – as I found out when submitting over two dozen parliamentary questions on related topics – but is reluctant to join it up and tease out the policy implications.
Given these myriad challenges, we are calling for a new and different design for migration policy, one which will make migration work for Britain. There are three elements.
First, an overall cap on the amount of migration. Only by doing this can we force proper decision-making and a conversation about the trade-offs between different types of migration. It is the only way to re-anchor the system and provide confidence to the public that there is overall control.
Second, a new, transparent process for making decisions: We argue that Parliament should set a migration ‘Budget’ for each year, with individual caps on each of the main types of migration. This should be accompanied by far greater transparency, and a drive to improve the currently inadequate data on migration and its impacts.
Third, a clear philosophy: the UK should aim to be the grammar school of the Western world, reducing migration by making it more selective, so that a greater share of immigration to the UK consists of more highly skilled people on higher wages. And we should be consistent and determined in cracking down on the many ways the current system is being abused
While we think that the cap should ultimately be decided by parliament, we think Government policy should be to set the overall cap on immigration at a level consistent with returning net migration to David Cameron’s ‘tens of thousands’ promise – the level it was at for most of the 1990s.
Of course, promises are cheap. That is why the report contains over 30 further recommendations on how to implement an entirely new approach to migration policy while reforming specific visa routes. The majority of these reforms can be set in motion right now, without the use of primary legislation, during the remainder of this Parliament.
And we must do so. Despite the Government having tightened visa requirements, official projections only have annual net migration falling to 315,000 by the end of the decade – still 30 per cent higher than 2010-19 levels. On this trajectory, net migration will amount to annual population growth of over 0.6 per cent across the 2020s – double the rate of the last three decades, and six times the rate of the 1990s.
If migration were rocket fuel for the economy, perhaps we’d have less to worry about, even if voters would be understandably aggrieved. But there is little reason to think that doubling down on net migration is going to magically produce different results to the last 25 years.
The post Neil O’Brien: Migration is not making Britain better off. Ministers must listen to voters – and act now. appeared first on Conservative Home.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Neil O’Brien MP
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, http://www.conservativehome.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.