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London Mayor calls on politicians to “make the case” for the positive side of immigration (17 December 2014)

Date: 17/12/2014
Duncan Lewis, Legal News Solicitors, London Mayor calls on politicians to “make the case” for the positive side of immigration

London Mayor Boris Johnson has implied that people complaining of overcrowding in London may be “xenophobic”.

Mr Johnson spoke about “xenophobia” during a tour of the Far East – and has now challenged people to state what they are “really calling for” when they talk about London being overcrowded.

Mr John questioned if the complainers would hold the same views if “the extra bodies” in the capital were “white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant babies”.

“How would people feel if the population pressure was caused entirely by white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant babies?” he said on a BBC London phone-in programme.

Recent years have seen the population swell with an estimated 230,000 migrants coming to the UK to work and settle every year, with the result that the UK population now stands at 62 million and is expected to continue growing.

Mr Johnson said that a “proper conversation” should take place about what the ultimate size of Britain should be, saying that if 62m is “too many” for the UK population, people should say by how much they would like it reduced.

On his tour of the Far East, Mr Johnson claimed that “xenophobia” was “part of human nature”, adding that politicians should make a case for the positive side of immigration.

Mr Johnson added that it was not the UK’s “approach” to follow China’s policy of limiting couples to one child – and added that a larger population was needed to sustain the UK economy and support Britain’s ageing population.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggest, however, that a falling population in the UK may have resulted in part from more British-born women delaying having a family until they have had a career – and in some cases remaining childless.

Social policies in the 1960s and 1970s actively encouraged young women to pursue a career rather than settle down and have a family beforehand – as a result, more UK-born women are having their first baby in their 40s and even 50s, having delayed having a family to concentrate on a career.

Government figures released in 2013 also show that one-fifth of women born in 1967 remained childless.

The advent of the Pill and legalised abortion also contributed to a social revolution fuelled by the Feminist movement, in which women were encouraged to work, rather than have a family young and stay at home.

Women who did try to combine a family with a career have spoken out about the difficulty of trying to achieve a work-life balance – or say they were sidelined at work because of interrupting their career to have children.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, for the decade 1988-1998, the number of live births in England and Wales peaked at 706,194 in1990 – but had dipped to 635,901 in 1998.

Approximately one-third of mothers were aged 25-29 as the decade began – but by 1998, fewer women aged 20-24 were giving birth and more women in their 30s and 40s were having babies.

By 1998, there had also been a fall in the number of children born within marriage – from 516,225 in 1988 to 395,290 in 1998.

By 2002, the birth rate in England and Wales had fallen to an all-time low from when records began in 1924 – with women having just 1.64 children each and one in five pregnancies across the UK ending in abortion. Women were also waiting until the age of 27 on average before starting a family. (Figures based on 2001 Census.)

Recent ONS figures show that there were 698,512 live births in England and Wales in 2013, compared with 729,674 babies born in 2012 – a 4.3% fall in the birth rate within one year.

The average age of mothers in 2013 also increased to 30.0 years, compared with an average age of 29.8 years in 2012.

The average age of fathers has also been gradually increasing, with the average age of men who became fathers in England and Wales rising from 30.8 years to 32.6 years between 1991 and 2011.

More men aged over 45 are also becoming fathers, including 833 men over the age of 60 who became fathers in 2011.

In 2013, more than one-quarter (26.5%) of the 698,512 live births in England and Wales also involved mothers born outside the UK, compared with 25.9% in 2012.
While the UK population remained steady at under 60m for decades in the post-war years, it continued to grow.

In 1950, the population stood at 50,616,000 – but by 2000, the UK population had grown to an estimated 60,291,000.
In 2015, it is estimated the population will have grown to 66m – and is estimated to grow to more than 77m by the year 2100.

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