Three in four people want to see the government take action against population growth, according to new figures which showed the majority of voters believe Britain is becoming too full too fast and comes among government statistics which shows the population being inflated by mass immigration.
Almost two-thirds (64 per cent) of UK voters believe that Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures projecting the population to rise to 69 million by 2026 and 73 million by 2041 are too high, while just two per cent thought them too low, The Times reports.
Carried out by Population Matters, a UK-based charity concerned with issues around population, sustainability, and the environment, the research found the proportion who were concerned that projected population growth is too high rose to 84 per cent of Brexit voters and 81 per cent of people who voted for the Conservative Party.
Adults who wanted Britain to remain in the European Union (EU) and Labour voters were significantly less concerned over the growth forecast, with 49 per cent and 50 per cent of the two groups, respectively, believing it to be too high.
Most of people’s worries concerning the rapidly increasing number of UK residents related to the effect population growth would have on public services such as healthcare and education, according to Population Matters.
The organisation, which wants to see policymakers stabilise the number of people in the country by setting “a rational, achievable figure for a sustainable population in the UK”, and aim towards reaching the target through reducing net immigration and measures like education on the environmental impacts of growth.
“People want politicians to address the overall issue of population and its impacts. It tells policymakers that the public have broader, legitimate concerns about population pressure that cannot be dismissed as based merely on ideology,” said Population Watch director Robin Maynard.
“People across the board are looking for intelligent forward-planning and positive action on population from government — a strategy for the immediate and long term to achieve a population in balance with the available resources and infrastructure of our country.”
ONS figures published at the end of last month showed the UK population pushed past 66 million in 2017, with 59 per cent of growth from the previous year resulting from net migration.
In November, the UK’s foremost immigration watchdog accused the government of seriously “downplaying” mass migration’s effect on the housing crisis after then-communities secretary Sajid Javid asserted that “two thirds of housing demand has nothing to do with immigration; it is to do with natural population growth”.
Revealing that newcomers account for 90 per cent of households added to the population over the last decade, Migration Watch described the claim — which ignored the effect of migrants already living in Britain — as “entirely false and misleading”.
“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.
The think tank’s chairman, Alp Mehmet, recently described the level of immigration as “simply unsustainable” after official data in May showed the number of residents born abroad had surged by three per cent in just one year.
Authorities in Birmingham noted recently that the city will soon follow London in becoming minority white British, as Breitbart London reported in June.
With almost a quarter of its population born abroad, the extent to which mass migration has transformed the demographics of Birmingham — the UK’s second largest city — was revealed in a 2013 report showing white children accounted for less than a third of the city’s school population.