The argument that Britain needs mass migration to sustain its economy and generous welfare state is fundamentally flawed and is, in reality, creating more economic problems, a government economist has argued.
An executive at the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), David Miles, has urged the left-wing UK government to focus on re-engaging Britons who have dropped out of the labour force rather than seeking to cover over the problem with the importation of millions of foreigners.
Proponents of the neo-liberal economic orthodoxy have long argued that, due to declining birth rates, mass migration is necessary to build a tax base to sustain the welfare and healthcare benefits promised to the ageing population.
However, Mr Miles said in comments reported by The Telegraph that “there are serious problems with the idea that faster population growth can consistently alleviate fiscal problems,” and that trying to expand the economy through mass migration “could not be sustained” given that migrants also use hospitals, schools, and other public services.
The top economist estimated that, based on current trends, “twenty million extra young people would need to arrive in the UK over the next 40 years to stabilise the dependency ratio at its current level. That would imply a UK population of around 100 million by 2064.”
The OBR revealed last year that low-skilled migrants represent an immediate drain on public finances, given that their cost to healthcare and other social programmes outweighs their relatively minimal tax contributions.
The non-departmental government body calculated that low-skilled migrants cost the taxpayer £151,000 ($200,000) by the time they hit the state pension age of 66 years old, £500,000 ($660,000) by the time they are 80, and over a million pounds sterling ($1.3m) if they live to 100. Conversely, the average British-born worker has a net positive contribution of £280,000 ($370,000) to public coffers by their 66th birthday.
Mr Miles also noted that although importing large numbers of foreigners may result in a rise in overall GDP, this fails to reflect the actual living standards of the public, which is better measured by GDP per capita.
Therefore, rather than trying to use mass migration to address economic issues, the OBR economist said that the government should instead seek to reverse the trend of out-of-work Britons, which he said has been growing sharply in the wake of the Chinese coronavirus lockdowns.
“The fiscal benefits of raising the incomes of those who are born in the UK and who might be on a trajectory of consistently below average wages are as great as the benefits of having more people come and stay in the UK with average or, especially, well above average earnings,” he said.
Miles specifically pointed to the number of young people claiming sick or disability benefits to avoid working, and said that the potential economic gains of having them return to the labour force could be “substantial”.
“There is a great deal of evidence that mental health, in particular, is typically improved by being in work. And mental health problems have been a very significant factor behind the recent rise in illness-related inactivity,” he said.
In a speech earlier this year, Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer also admitted that the promised economic panacea of mass migration had failed to materialise, pointing to anaemic economic growth amid the highest levels of immigration in the nation’s history. However, Starmer ultimately backed away from the speech after his leftist base accused him of echoing former Conservative MP Enoch Powell by warning that Britain faces the prospect of becoming an “island of strangers“.
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