Immigration

Last Sunday, in The Observer, Will Hutton was arguing about the pros and cons of immigration.  As we would expect he is very much in favour of immigration but he was arguing for a scheme to charge the super rich up to £2½ million for each of 100 fast track visas issued every year — the revenue to be used for improving infra-structure and for good causes.  He was very critical of Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, for being a tub-thumping anti-immigration, anti-EU, right-wing politician anxious to exploit a root unease about the levels of immigration.  Last year net immigration into Britain was about 220,000.  This is a staggering figure almost enough for another city the size of Bradford [290,000].  Where do we put them?  If they live in a fairly normal housing environment of four per dwelling, then we need another 55,000 houses or apartments just to get them in.  And then we need the back-up services of water, gas, electricity, etc for them to live normal lives.  At present we are building new homes at the rate of about 120,000 per year; so half are needed for the new immigrants.  House prices nationally are rising again, even though they are already too expensive — especially in the south-east.  The government needs to double the rate of building — at least.  In the 1950s, when Harold Macmillan was Housing Minister, he achieved house building rates up to 500,000 per year.  Sure, conditions today are very different but the present rate of house building is rather pathetic.  House building is a good creator of new jobs — they can't export jobs to China.  House building boosts the economy in many ways because it creates so many demands for products manufactured in the UK — from bricks, concrete, drain pipes and roofing tiles to plasterboard, wallpaper, paint and fitted kitchens.  It will tend to lower property prices until the government starts charging the correct interest rates and makes mortgages easier to obtain.  It should be possible to buy a first house for less than 4x the average wage — that is completely impossible in many parts of the country.

A fundamental problem and a cause of much unease about immigration is population density.  England , particularly, is one of the most densely populated places on Earth.  We have 1054 people/square mile; Poland is 319 people/square mile; Belarus is 120 people/square mile and Kazakhstan — a place almost as big as Western Europe [excluding Scandinavia] — is down at 15.39 people/square mile.  It is not surprising that we have problems.  We cannot carry on with net immigration levels that will add 1 million people to our population every five years. 

This country has many problems caused not only by immigration and globalisation but more than anything by incompetent governments.  Labour government of the 60s and 70s ignored the chaos caused by union militancy and out-dated industries.  Tory governments of the 80s and 90s became obsessed by privatisation and persuaded themselves that we did not need to manufacture anything — we could leave that to countries where labour was cheap.  And, worse still, we allowed the financial services sector to run riot, allowing them to pay themselves obscene salaries and bonuses.  The governments of Blair and Brown allowed this to continue until, in the traditions of 1929, the whole edifice collapsed and we, the taxpayers of the western world had to bail them out.  Yet, even now as our government struggles to balance its books and the debt gets bigger and bigger, the financial institutions pay themselves the same obscene salaries and bonuses as before while being fined for various forms of misrepresentation, corruption and incompetence.

The bowing of our leaders to finance and speculation while neglecting our ability to make things has moved the concentration of population and jobs towards the south east, has made property impossibly expensive and left vast tracts of the UK semi-abandoned.  With proper support and directing of investment, this country is capable of competing with any country in the world.  We built the railways that transformed civilisation in the 19th century yet now we are almost incapable of making railways, ships and large civil engineering structures.  We can make cars — with proper investment as at Jaguar and Nissan — and we do reasonably well in supplying the aviation business but there is so much more that we could do. 

British attitude the EU is ambivalent at best and increasing numbers would like us to get out.  This may not be the right thing to do but the Eu does little to persuade us that setting ourselves free would be detrimental.  The EU needs to either [a] form a proper economic union — unlikely or [b] abandon the euro — also unlikely.  Will Hutton tells us that net immigration into Britain from the original 15 member states was about 30,000 but the net influx including all the new members for Eastern Europe is very much higher.  Nevertheless, the likelihood is that over the years immigrants form the EU will often return to their home countries.  Consequently, net EU immigration is not likely to be a problem in the long term.  It is net immigration from non-EU countries that will be a continuing problem and I will address that issue in a separate posting.

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