IMMIGRATION AND PRODUCTIVITY

The Office for Budget Responsibility, Economic and fiscal outlook, November 2022 lets slip the Tory approach to economic growth. Paragraph 3 states: ‘The rate of growth in potential output in the final year of the forecast is unchanged since March, albeit with a larger contribution from net migration offsetting slower growth in productivity.’

So, the argument is that lower productivity is counterbalanced by higher immigration to achieve the same level of growth. That can only lead to lower standards of living, due to lower wages and higher costs.

Paragraph 18 states:

‘Higher population growth. We now assume net migration declines from 224,000 a year in 2023 to settle at 205,000 a year from 2026 onwards (based on the ONS 2020-based interim migration projection). This compares to 136,000 and 129,000 in those years in our March forecast (based on the 2018-based ONS zero net EU migration variant). This upward revision reflects evidence of sustained strength in inward migration since the post-Brexit migration regime was introduced. According to provisional estimates, it reached 239,000 in the year to June 2022 and recent Home Office visa data point to continued rises in the number of visas issued to non-EU migrants, which reached 1.1 million in the year to June 2022. It also reflects discussions with the Home Office’s Migration Advisory Committee over what levels of net migration for the next several years might be consistent with the current migration regime. Moving to this higher net migration assumption adds 0.6 per cent to the adult population at the forecast horizon.’

The report explained that the number of health and care visas issued had tripled in the year 2021/2022.

We voted Brexit with the intention of taking back control of our borders. Yet the Tories are content to flood the UK with both legal and illegal immigrants. The idea that increasing immigration is a good way of boosting growth is Ponzi economics. That the government can pocket an assumed increase in taxes while offloading unpaid bills onto the public for an increased housing shortage, more congested roads, packed railway carriages and the strain on hospitals and schools, might suit the government. But it is not in the interests of the public. It is a fraud. Nor will it increase output and then tax revenues – as the OBR report states. It will only mean that the UK need not bother to increase productivity.