Reg Empey: It is astonishing that a major power like the United Kingdom has lost control of its borders and of mass immigration
The migration crisis has dominated the news agenda over the summer, but has been years in the making.
Having an open public discussion about it has proved difficult, because when mentioned, there has been a chorus of accusations of racism and other abuse hurled at those who raise the subject. There have been recent examples of this in Northern Ireland from a ‘wokeist’ minority trying, and failing, to stifle discussion.
Now that the issue has become a public crisis, and I think there is no disguising that any longer, more people are talking about it.
There are two distinct strands to this: the general level of migration over recent years and the illegal boat crossing via the English Channel that have topped the agenda this summer.
Why is migration, whether legal, irregular or illegal a big deal? The answer is that in small quantities, I don’t think it is, but in the UK, it is anything but small.
Between 2010 and 2021 over seven million people were added to the UK population. Between 2010 and 2022 nearly seven million additional GP registrations by migrants were recorded.
England is the most densely populated nation in Europe: 3.5 times more crowded than France and nearly twice as crowded as Germany. This simply cannot go on. Numbers matter. There is no point in ignoring a vast increase in population and pretending it’s not happening. Government has set out ambitious housing targets to meet the huge demand: where do people think this demand is coming from? The increase in the population is coming from migration on an unprecedented scale. To meet housing demands in England due to migration, a house would need to be built every five minutes!
People then say that our public services are stretched to breaking point: problems with waiting lists in the NHS and problems with water and sewerage and congestion on our roads, and increased private sector rents: all of this is down to numbers. It is amazing that government in particular and Parliament in general doesn’t seem to join up the dots and conclude that such a vast increase in the population of the UK in such a short period is the main cause of the increase in demand for these services.
To put this in context, in 2023 the net increase in our population as a result of migration was averaging out at 17,500 people per week! How on earth can any country survive such an influx?
Most attention recently has been on the small boat arrivals, the number of which has risen this year. The UK government is now part of the business model of the thugs and smuggling gangs who ply this wretched trade. The prime minister has failed to ‘smash the gangs’ as he promised. The gangs are prospering as Keir Starmer’s first decision when entering No 10 was to stop the Rwanda plan. Whether it would have worked or not we will never know, but the gangs cheered when it was scrapped, and the numbers have risen ever since. We have no idea who many of these illegal so called asylum seekers are. They destroy any documents they have, sometimes on the advice of groups who seek to help them when they arrive in the UK. Extremist organisation and governments could have sent infiltrators to this country, and we simply cannot tell.
The ‘small boat’ crossings have added significantly to immigration. Since this all started in 2018, an astonishing 180,000 people have used this route and paid a fortune to the gangs.
In Northern Ireland we have seen the rise of asylum seeker hotels and other accommodation. Throughout the nation it costs £6.7 million per day to house people in these hotels and then there is the cost of accommodating over 111,000 asylum seekers in non-hotel accommodation, such as houses of multiple occupation and private rental properties.
The costs are vast. Billions of pounds are being spent on all of this, to say nothing of the social unrest it has generated. The sad thing about all this is that we have had many people come to the UK to work, and in NI our health and social care system could not function without immigrant labour, especially in the short term. But as a nation, we have to make a decision about how we value such jobs, especially in the care sector, that currently are not being filled by local people. We under value care workers: they do an essential and very taxing job and are not getting the pay and recognition that will be needed long term.
The other issue surrounding migration is the changes that are being made by people coming to the UK from different cultures. Some UK cities are unrecognisable from 20 years ago. In London, which has a population of nearly nine million people, only 28% of school pupils are classified as ‘white British’ and only 37% of the total population is ‘white British’.
There is much to be said for having some diversity in the population: it can enrich not only the economic but also social, academic and recreational areas of life. The problem the UK has, and indeed it is emerging in the Irish Republic as well, is the pace and extent of change in such a short time period. This has led to the growth in hostility between communities and virtually a total failure of attempts at integration.
The political problem has been that successive governments have promised to ‘reduce migration to tens of thousands’ when in practice migration has exploded. Hostility towards migration in part fuelled the Brexit referendum and the UK decision to leave the EU. Amazingly, as we left the EU migration from the rest of the world accelerated at three times the rate of pre 2016 levels! Today more EU citizens are leaving the UK than entering and vast numbers are now coming from Africa and Asia.
That a major world power can completely lose control of its borders and migration policy is astonishing in itself, but we are now seen as a soft touch by gangsters and others who use our hospitality and generosity against us.
We have seen the plush accommodation provided to asylum seekers: all the food they can eat: immediate access to health and education services: provision of phones and spending money and kept in warm and dry conditions. Contrast this with the cutting of the winter fuel allowance and other attempts to reduce spending on vulnerable people many of whom are struggling to feed families and keep warm.
A recent court case demonstrated that because of international agreements, the rights of people who come here illegally counts for more than the rights of the indigenous population who may object to their presence.
The blame for all this lies with successive governments whose rhetoric has never matched what they actually achieved. There is no democratic mandate for allowing vast numbers of people to come into this country to settle. We need a pause, time to think and collectively work out a long-term strategy and time to really get behind a meaningful integration policy. That the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is being used by criminals who should be deported it a disgrace, and the prime minister needs to get his act together to avoid social tensions getting any higher.
• Lord (Reg) Empey is an Ulster Unionist peer and former leader of the party