HL Deb 24 October 2002 vol 639 cc112-3WA
Baroness Masham of Ilton

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Further to the Written Answer by Lord McIntosh of Haringey on 3 July (WA 40), what number of people immigrating annually to the United Kingdom would be needed to prevent:

  1. (a) a decline the size of the United Kingdom population;
    2. WA 113
  2. (b) a decline in the size of the population of working age in the United Kingdom; and
  3. (c) an increase in the ratio between the population of working age and the retired in the United Kingdom. [HL5956]

103. Lord McIntosh of Haringey

These questions were addressed in an article in the spring 2001 issue (No 103) ofPopulation Trends1, which is available in the Library and from the National Statistics website: www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/Product.asp?vink=6303.

In this article future trends in population size, age structure and support ratios (the ratio of people of working age to those of pensionable age) were considered under a variety of different assumptions about future fertility and net international migration. (Net migration is the difference between the number of immigrants and the number of emigrants.) Assumed mortality improvements were taken from the then current principal national population projection produced by the Government Actuary's department.

In the current national population projections, the population of the United Kingdom is projected to continue to increase until around the year 2040 and then to start to decline. In theory, a number of different combinations of future fertility and net migration levels could prevent the total population, and the working age population, from declining in size. For example, the article concluded that with the then current fertility assumptions from the principal, national population projection, annual net inward migration of 145,000 persons a year would produce approximate stability in both total population size and in the size of the working age population in the second half of this century.

The effect of different levels of net migration on support ratios is a more complex issue and is discussed fully in the article in Population Trends1 Shaw C. United Kingdom population trends in the 21st century. Population Trends 103, TSO (2001) pp 37–46.