Migration Watch UK: News

Paying the price for a decade of deception

By Sir Andrew Green
Chairman of Migration Watch UK
The Daily Mail, London, 10 February 2010

So there was indeed a Labour conspiracy to change the nature of our society by mass immigration.

New evidence confirms claims made by a Labour political adviser last October which he subsequently tried to recant.

In an article for the Evening Standard, Andrew Neather revealed that ‘it didn’t just happen: the deliberate policy of ministers from late 2000 until at least February last year ...was to open up the UK to mass migration’.

He went on to describe a Government policy document which he had helped to write in 2000.

He said that ‘drafts were handed out in summer 2000 only with extreme reluctance: there was paranoia about it reaching the media’.

The paper eventually surfaced as a purely technical product of the research department of the Home Office but earlier drafts that he saw ‘included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural’.

We in Migrationwatch have now obtained an earlier draft of that policy paper, circulated in October 2000.

The full article is on the Press Articles page on Migrationwatch web site.

The Key: Ethnic Communities Vote Heavily for Labour

By Sir Andrew Green,
Chairman, Migration Watch UK
The Daily Telegraph, 10 February, 2010

I rubbed my eyes with disbelief when I saw an article by Andrew Neather, a former speech writer for Blair, Blunkett and Straw, saying that mass immigration “didn’t just happen: the deliberate policy of Ministers from late 2000 … was to open up the UK to mass immigration”.

At last the truth was out. The public have known for years that we were building problems for ourselves but somehow it wasn’t quite respectable to mention it in polite company.

All that is changing fast as people wake up to the fact that we are now on course for a population of 70 million in 20 years’ time.

The Labour years have already seen an extra three million immigrants in Britain. If you add subsequent children, you are looking at the equivalent of half the population of London. These are just the official figures. Estimates of the number of illegal immigrants range up to another one million.

How could this have happened in the face of growing public opposition? Was it a cock-up or a conspiracy?

The full article is on the Press Articles page of Migrationwatch web site.

Only Severe Cuts to Immigration will Stop Population Hitting 70 million well within 25 Years

Even if the birth rate were to drop to levels not seen for 100 years the UK population is almost bound to hit 70m within 25 years unless there is a dramatic cut in immigration levels, says a new report out yesterday.

An analysis of the Government’s own figures – issued on the eve of a speech by the Home Secretary on immigration and population - clearly shows that, even on such an unlikely birth rate, currently projected levels of immigration will cause the population of the UK to reach 70 million shortly after 2031 and then go on growing.

'The Government is trying to suggest that a fall in the birth rate might keep our population below 70 million. They are desperate not to admit that their policies will mean a population increase to this unprecedented figure because they know it is of enormous concern to a great many people. Yet once again their own figures trip them up and no amount of obfuscation will disguise the facts,’ said Sir Andrew Green, chairman of think-tank Migrationwatch which carried out the research into the official figures.

The report points out that the latest (2008-based) Office for National Statistics (ONS) population projections clearly show the population of the UK reaching 70 million in 2029. The government suggests that such projections are unreliable partly because changes in the birth rate are unpredictable.

However, apart from the “baby boom” of the 1960s when the fertility rate for the UK peaked at 2.95, it has fluctuated between quite narrow limits since the mid 1970s. Since 2001 it has been increasing, partly because of immigration.

Having lost all the other arguments the Government are now cynically suggesting that the ONS population projections cannot be relied upon as an indication of future trends. Our paper nails this last gasp strategy and demonstrates yet again why a severe cut in immigration is urgently required,’ said Sir Andrew