Forecasts published by the European Commission suggest that Britain will overtake Germany within 50 years as the population rises from 60.9 million today to 77 million.
The projected 25 per cent increase triggered renewed calls for the Government to stem the flow of immigration, which has surged since Labour came to power 11 years ago. Increasing population, together with a rise in the number of elderly people, will heap further pressure on public services, particular the NHS.
Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Home Secretary, said that the report showed a coherent strategy was needed to deal with population growth. “This not only requires an annual limit on immigration, which takes into account its impact on the public service infrastructure and cohesion,” he said, “it also requires us to tackle other issues like family breakdown which have a direct effect on resource use in our country, as well as to improve our skills base.”
If we are all getting older and not breeding sufficiently to maintain the size of the workforce, we will run into trouble like this, reported in The Herald:
The cost of providing the Scottish Government's popular free personal care policy has risen by 15% in a year.
Official figures published yesterday show the cost of delivering the policy rose from £280m to £321m in 2006-07.
Instead of limiting immigration, surely we need to encourage it, so that the workforce will be big enough to pay for the costs of the elderly.
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