For reasons, I’ve taken a lot of Ubers in the past few months. Every single driver has had a nice car, has been terribly polite and, how can I put this tactfully, had no interest in football but mad keen on cricket. You ain’t kidding we need immigrants. Our doors should (and must) always be open to people who want to graft and do better for themselves and their families.
Net migration in 2023 was 680,000 with a total UK population of 70 million. The green belt round my area is being eaten up by new houses. I just noticed another field the other day has now got a house builders board on it. Seriously would you be happy to increase to 1 million a year. 2 million a year. 5 million a year. Do you want to put a figure on it that you would be comfortable with? This is one very overcrowded small island.
As far as I understand it, less than 12% of the country has been built on, so overcrowding the island isn’t really an issue.
In addition, more can probably done within existing towns and cities. For example, Britain Remade published proposals ahead of the London Mayoral elections on how London could increase the number of new homes substantially through rezoning industrial sites, improving existing council blocks while adding density, and building on some of the golf courses in and around London.
Provided the majority is built on brownfield sites.
I think its fair to say that.
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So I ask again…
Would you be happy to increase net migration to 1 million a year. 2 million a year. 5 million a year. Do you want to put a figure on it that you would be comfortable with? And it isn’t just land area.
But anyway apart from Netherlands, Malta & Luxemburg England has the highest population per sq km in Western Europe. This figure is 2018 was 426. No doubt higher now.
By comparison,
Germany 238
France 124
Spain 95.
Problem is a race to the bottom, cuts costs but leaves little room for innovation.
You need to invest into making things better. to frequently its a mentality of whats the minimum I can get away with.
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I heard Rory Stewart suggesting that there should be more done to encourage mid-rise housing in London, e.g. 6 or 7 story developments. We lived in an apartment like this in Germany and I can see the advantages. We had a large apartment, 120 sqm, and a dedicated cellar and underground car park. Essentially, 42 apartments on an area of around 4 detached homes.
I’m not sure exactly what the driving factors are for this, but the land value tax favours this as you are only paying tax on a share of the land that you occupy.
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By the way, of that 680,000, 40,000 were illegal, and even fewer arrived on ‘small boats’.
All the attention is turned on a tiny part of the whole.
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My “illegal” so you mean people who arrived claiming asylum? Those who are actualy in the country illegally are, by definition, below the radar.
I think a huge chunk of the newly arrived people are students so you will get a churn of people every 3 years or so.
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This may be of interest in terms of overall population growth.
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The problem is not with the number of properties. It is that those properties are concentrated in the hands of too few owners, many of whom do not even live in this country but instead treat their property here as an investment and a device to avoid taxes.
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You didn’t answer the question…
Source:
https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/illegal-migration-dealing-with-inadmissible-asylum-applications/
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Yes, I’m very happy to have more people move to the UK and contribute. I haven’t studied the topic in depth to have a view on what the ‘correct’ number is - I just don’t think we are anywhere near a crisis level right now.
Sq km figures are only part of the story, for example that figure for England is heavily skewed by London (where I have posted above we have capacity to add substantially more homes). South West England averages about 230 and the average in Wales is about 150.
As @cynicaloldgit has suggested above too there is more that can be done with existing housing stock (Something like a million homes are empty, with about 20% of those long term vacant i.e more than 6 months)
Also, that Net Migration figure above will consist of people joining families or students.
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Can we export the useless bastards at the same rate?
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As so often, the answer is a bit of all of the above. Housing is an area that is adversely affected by neo liberal policies. You can see that in the US, in Australia and in many parts of Europe. When the market is deregulated, prices and rents spiral and the working poor are shut out.
The elephant in the room, as usual, is population. The topic is taboo, largely to the policies of Nazis and eugenicists, but we can’t increase the number of humans on the planet forever. At some point we have to turn back, and that will involve a painful adjustment period where there are a lot of old people and fewer young people to look after them.
This problem will most likely be solved by huge world wars and/or pandemics. That’s how nature usually deals with imbalances.
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There is a discussion to be had over whether we want to have an increasing population or not. At the moment without immigration our population size would be stagnating and maybe going down. As an environmentalist I’m all for the idea that we can’t have an ever increasing population, however our current economy is built on the idea of having more and more people. And with an ageing population it’s going to be tricky to maintain standards of living without an influx of young workers. But obviously we can’t just keep increasing population endlessly. When I studied sustainable economics at university I’d have never of thought that it would be the far right and Nigel Farage who would become flag bearer!
Side note, it bugs me when the media discuss immigration without mentioning overall population growth - the two are explicitly linked.
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Wow. They have unilaterally changed the UNHCR definitions. The usually accepted international terms would be “irregular” or “undocumented”.
It is only illegal if they are then working on the black market and, by definition, they are undetected. If they have requested asylum then they are classified as such (and again, that is an internationally recognised legal process).
The odd thing is, I can’t even find the details for visa violations. I wonder if they just turn a blind eye to this now?
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Errr! Just guessing here, austerity, Tories, … , among other things?
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That’s because, with all due respect, it’s an inane one.
The levels of immigration can’t just be put down to a single number. The country’s needs will define how many people are required to support our ageing population.
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