Questions of housing, jobs and population in the Brexit debate
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Version 0 of 1. Forget the economy – those who want Brexit are happy to take a short-term hit for the long-term benefits over immigration and sovereignty. So why are they wrong? First, if the government can’t reduce immigration on the portion that it already controls, Brexit will make no difference. Even with immigration at historic highs, unemployment is still near historic lows. If foreigners weren’t taking up our jobs, we wouldn’t have enough hands to go round. Second, the pressure on infrastructure is not just the fault of immigration; natural growth is significant. Almost as many new mouths are born each year as come from another country. Yet investment in housing, the NHS and education has not been keeping pace – a neglect made worse by a programme of unpopular cuts. And third, how much control would we have over “our” country after Brexit, anyway? Are we so happy with the decisions “they” make in Westminster? How many people voted for austerity? Higher tuition fees? How many support fracking, or scrapping the “green deal”? Most people still have little ability to influence government policy. Quite apart from environmental and employment benefits, our rights are protected through EU membership by the possibility of appeal to a higher level. This is a clear advantage for the ordinary person. And the price of belonging to this club? Adjust the misleading £350m to a net figure, and our individual weekly contribution amounts to the cost of a pint of beer.Simon PrentisCheltenham, Gloucestershire • I’m fed up with more lecturing articles from the liberal elite telling me I must vote remain (which happens to be my instinct). My reaction is: “Are you willing to give up your home for a migrant?” Because, with England’s housing crisis, someone will forgo theirs. This is a cheap “generosity” that gives at the expense of our poor and homeless. The well-housed liberals blithely separate the issues of housing crisis and migration when they are inseparable. This is not racism but joined-up thinking. I am an immigrant’s son, tolerant of migration, but, until migrants bring houses with them, housing provision must match migration as well as solve the existing housing crisis.Leonard HarleyLymington, Hampshire • Polly Toynbee (Opinion, 14 June) is absolutely right to highlight how any rational debate on Europe is being lost amid a cacophony of nonsense about immigration. It is not insignificant that the owners of the newspapers who have done most to sell their products on the back of anti-migrant coverage over recent years – the Daily Mail, Express, Sun and Times – are almost uniformly in favour of leaving Europe for their own commercial interests. Migration will only reduce when the economy begins to falter. Then the migrants will disappear as quickly as they came. This doesn’t fit with anti-migrant newspapers’ fiction that migrants only come for benefits, but it is the hard cold economic reality.Paul DonovanLondon • Perhaps those worried about immigration should look at the population forecasts for UK workforce and age populations. The ONS figures for the UK workforce at the end of 2015 was 31.42 million out of 65 million total population. The over-65-years population is 11.4 million, some of whom, like myself, may still be at work. By 2050, when today’s 30-year-olds reach 65, there is predicted to be an over-65-years population of 19 million. The equivalent workforce would need to be 52 million. Giving a total population needed to keep pensions/contributions similar, of 106 million. If the workforce retires at 75 there would be a transfer of approximately 0.5 million per year to the workforce from pensioned age-group, so the workforce would only need to be 47 million, but the total population would need to be 92 million. The current UK birth rate is 1.83 per woman (down from 1.85 in 2014) and the replacement breeding rate in UK is 2.075. This leaves a breeding gap of 114,000 per year to keep our numbers level (so a drop of 4 million by 2050). Unless we do something very different in the future from the past, we will need to allow in probably at least 14 million immigrants, most of breeding age, to reach that 92 million by 2050. To reach 14 million in 35 years is 400,000 per year. We need the people. They will include essential builders, engineers, health workers and food handlers.Anthony BushOwner/CEO, Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm, Wraxall, North Somerset • Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com |