Successive British governments have been accused of misleading the public on mass migration’s effect on the housing crisis, in a report revealing migrants headed 90 per cent of new households in England over the past decade.
Presenting its new report on the subject, Migration Watch UK said Communities Secretary Sajid Javid’s claim that “two thirds of housing demand has nothing to do with immigration; it is to do with natural population growth”, was “entirely false and misleading”.
The minister’s claim was based on the government’s projection that between 2014 and 2049 Britain will need homes for 210,000 new households a year, of which it said 77,000 will be down to immigration, and the remaining 133,000 resulting from future family formation by the existing population.
But the projection “seriously understates the true impact of immigration on housing demand”, according to Migration Watch’s report, which notes that not only does the government model its figures on the assumption that future net migration will be much lower than today, it also ignores the effect of migrants already living in Britain.
“The existing migrant population in England will also be driving future household formation; however, this has been misleadingly designated as ‘natural change’ among the existing UK population as a whole rather than as also due to previous migration,” states the report.
According to Office for National Statistics (ONS), 90 per cent of additional households in England between the years 2005 to 2014 were headed by someone born abroad, the migration policy think tank notes.
Asserting that “most discussions of housing focus relentlessly on supply while largely ignoring demand”, the report accused the government of “downplaying” the role of mass migration in England’s “very serious housing crisis”.
“Reducing immigration would substantially alleviate the task of addressing the very serious housing crisis that we now face,” it points out.
Migration Watch UK chairman Lord Green of Deddington said: “We have a major crisis over housing affecting huge numbers of people but especially the young who are finding it ever harder to get onto the housing ladder.
“Yet the focus of the debate is still entirely on supply; nobody dares talk about demand and its principal driver – immigration. That has to stop. Our paper breaks new ground in daring to point to this central, if uncomfortable, truth.”
Welcoming the report was UKIP Immigration Spokesman John Bickley, who said it “exposes the devious way in which the current Conservative government, much like the last Labour one, is determined to avoid admitting that their disastrous immigration policies have had a material and detrimental impact on public services and the availability of housing for the indigenous population, particularly the younger generation.
“Only UKIP is willing to take the tough decisions to reverse this unsustainable trend and to ensure the interests of British citizens are put before those of big business and their insatiable demand for cheap imported labour and its impact on our overstretched and underfunded public services,” he told Breitbart London.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.