The Home Secretary, Alan Johnson MP, has said that the United Kingdom‘will cope’ with a population of 70 million people. That statement on its own seems complacent. Surely we need more assurance and planning than the view of a potentially here-today, gone-tomorrow politician.
Britain has derived great benefits from immigration over centuries, adding to and refreshing our culture and providing a relatively small country with a disproportionate influence in the world. The gains for our country did not come automatically without some calculation and realistic policy making. There has been more to our history than merely admitting new people toBritainand then failing to even know with any accuracy the numbers here, arriving and leaving.
When new people arrive in Britainto contribute to and share in our national prosperity, we should want to ensure that our country is welcoming and able to provide the right level and quality of public services. Otherwise we can create a deficit in provision for newcomers and the existing population.
I will draw an analogy with a computer system. It is designed to cope with and serve a certain level of input and activity with room to grow over time. If we exceed the designed level of input and activity over too short a period of time, aspects of that system will fall over. They will cease to function properly and customers dependent on that system will suffer.
We see huge pressures on our education system, housing and the NHS to name a few areas but it is the responsibility of government to plan for the future so that these and other services can cope. If we have a limited picture of population growth or that growth is over too short a time scale, we run serious risks with our services and there is evidence that the government has got this area of policy wrong.
For Britain to remain a modern and vibrant country showing thought leadership in the world, we can see from history that some change in our population make-up is no bad thing and is actually invigorating. To build on this past success, we need government to operate in a much more planned way – anticipating and influencing population growth rather than taking a distant seat away from what is happening. It can then properly plan our service and infrastructure needs for the future.
If government fails to act on this policy imperative, we run the risk a haphazard policy on population growth coupled with a ragged response in coping with the outcomes. None of this makes for the most contented country that we could have. Neither does it allow us to properly realise the rich advantages associated with a diverse nation.
Councillor Bob Lanzer, Leader of Crawley Borough Council
16th December 2009