#Census2021: What's the Damage?

The Office of National Statistics has released the second instalment of the 2021 census data, which shows the number of people now living in England and Wales that were not born in the United Kingdom. I think it is worth taking a close look at these numbers to understand just how the Conservative Party is changing this country. 

The Immigration Figures

We are told in the ONS’s report that:

“One in six usual residents of England and Wales were born outside the UK, an increase of 2.5 million since 2011, from 7.5 million (13.4%) to 10 million (16.8%).”

This data only includes first-generation immigrants to England and Wales. The data does not include: figures for Scotland, the number of second or third-generation immigrants, nor illegal immigrants. We can, however, deduce these figures from other numbers we have been provided. 

We are informed that there are ten million foreigners now living in England, pushing the total recorded population to approximately 60 million. 

“Our release of unrounded population data from the census shows that the usual resident population in England and Wales grew by more than 3.5 million (6.3%) in the period between censuses, from 56,075,912 in 2011 to 59,597,542 in 2021.”

When the population increase due to the birth rate is removed (approximately 1.5 million), this shows that the net migration into England and Wales averaged 200,000 foreigners per year. This is after remigration of foreigners out of England and Wales is taken into account.  However, this is only half of the story, and the real numbers are subsumed in the data.

The Birth Rates

The fertility rate of the native British population has been on a decline for many years, but the overall population of England and Wales has increased through live births. As the recent census informs us:  

“Monthly data show that from April 2011 until the end of March 2021 there were 6.8 million live births and 5.3 million deaths registered in England and Wales. This represents a natural increase of approximately 1.5 million usual residents (42.5% of the total population increase)."

This averages to 680,000 live births per year for the last ten years, which is very low considering the historic live birth rate of the United Kingdom, and nearing the record low of 657,000 in 1977. 

The average death rate in England and Wales has been relatively consistent with recent historic trends at 530,000 deaths per year. From 1990-1999, there was an average of 562,000 deaths per year, from 2000-2009, there was an average of 518,000 deaths per year, and between 2010-2019 average of 515,000 deaths per year. The slight increase to 608,000 in 2020 is probably due to the COVID pandemic.

Currently, the ONS puts the fertility rate at 1.61 children per woman and the 2021 census has registered a population growth of 1.5 million in the last decade due to live births, so the question is: “who is having children?”

One 2008 study by the Institute for Social & Economic Research at the University of Essex for the Human Rights Commission found that the average number of children for White British people was 2.2, whereas the average family size for Indians was 2.6, for Pakistanis it was 3.2, for Bangladeshis it was 3.6. This would suggest that the population growth is not evenly distributed, with some communities in the UK growing faster than others. 

The Total Number of Foreigners

The ethnicity data for the 2021 census has yet to be released, but we can make reasonable estimates based on what we already know. In the 2011 census, it was reported that there were 45.1 million English and Welsh people in England and Wales. 

This figure has remained remarkably consistent; since 1961 the indigenous population of England and Wales has been between 44.57 million to 45.5 million, so we can reasonably estimate that the 2021 census shows there to be approximately 45 million English and Welsh people.

As the latest ONS release has shown, the population of England and Wales is 59,597,542, which we can round up to 60 million. This is the known population which filled in the census, and does not account for the unseen foreigners also living in England and Wales. 

Subtracting the number of English and Welsh from the overall population, then, we have a rough figure of 15 million non-indigenous people living in the country. This means that a quarter of the people living in England and Wales, and this is mostly in England by an overwhelming margin, are of foreign descent. 

The ONS figures are reasonably granular and give us relatively accurate figures of where the foreigners have originated too. According to the Figure 2 summary, we can see that (to the nearest 50,000), in the last ten years, the number of immigrants from the largest groups of immigrants were:

It seems worth noting that in 2014, Nigel Farage predicted that 250,000 Romanians may come to live in the United Kingdom. It turned out that his prediction was wildly understated, being half the true number that came. 

Demographic Replacement

The staggering number of foreign immigrants to the UK has changed the demographic make-up of English cities, replacing the native population who have moved elsewhere in the country. 

It will be objected that I have used the term “replacement”, but I am afraid I cannot think of a more accurate word to describe what has happened.  If there had been expansion of cities or new cities founded to house the foreign population, then it would not be an apt term to describe what is happening, but as it stands, we can demonstrably show that the indigenous population of English cities has been replaced with a foreign immigrant population. 

The most obvious place to start is London, which the census informed us in 2011 was a minority-indigenous city even then, with only 45% being “white British” (English, Welsh and Scottish). In the intervening decade, London has changed even further. 

“London has remained the region with both the largest proportion of people born outside the UK and the largest proportion of people with non-UK passports. In 2021, more than 4 in 10 (40.6%) usual residents in London were non-UK born, and more than 1 in 5 (23.3%) had a non-UK passport. This is a small increase since 2011, when 36.7% of London residents were non-UK born, and 21.0% had a non-UK passport.”

In 2011, fewer than half of London residents were indigenous British (English, Scottish or Welsh), but now nearly 41% are first-generation immigrants. Now, London is likely to be filled with second- or third-generation foreigners, with likely fewer than 40% being indigenous British. 

We can examine this in greater detail as we can look at the foreign-born population of various London boroughs. These provide a good example for the term “replacement” as opposed to “expansion”, as these are ancient and enclosed areas which have no room to expand. The following boroughs of London are not only not mostly populated by indigenous Britons, but not even by second- or third-generation immigrants:

There are other notable statistics of English cities, which have very large foreign-born populations:

Again, this is not to say that the non-immigrant population of these towns and cities are of English, Welsh or Scottish descent; in many cases, such as Birmingham, these are already populated by a large number of people of foreign descent who are not immigrants. 

Illegal Immigration in England and Wales

The census data cannot capture the effect of illegal immigration to England and Wales, but we have other metrics to estimate it by. 

In 2019, Pew Research believed there to be between 800,000 and 1.2 million illegal immigrants in England and Wales. It seems likely that these reside almost entirely in the legal immigrant communities of England and Wales, where they will have friends and family members who will give them residence and work.  

There has also been the issue of the illegal channel crossings, and the British government’s inability to remove these very open and public demonstrations of lawlessness. Migrationwatch UK estimates that the “invasion” of the channel migrants means are currently 79,000 illegal migrants in England and Wales. 

In 2021, the number of illegal immigrants deported reached a record low. The government’s official statistics show that only 2,910, compared to the 15,000 deported in 2011. Recent political events have caused either zero or close to zero channel migrant deportations. 

The (Minor) Brexit Effect

In the wake of the Brexit referendum, the Lord Ashcroft polling indicated that Britain gaining “control of immigration and its own borders” was the second-highest political priority of pro-Brexit voters, behind the political sovereignty of Britain.  

However, two years on from the Brexit vote, an IPSOS/Mori poll suggested that, in fact, immigration had gone from being one of the top priorities of Brexit voters, to one of the lowest priorities. I do not believe this is an indication that the British public are suddenly in favour of mass immigration, as other polls show that 44% of the public would like immigration reduced compared with only 17% who wish to see it increased, but instead seems that they have been reassured that the problem is in hand and that Brexit may have dealt with it. 

However, the data shows us that, in fact, the effect of Brexit on immigration was very small. In the year after the Brexit referendum, there was a fall in net migration from the European Union of approximately 100,000 foreigners. However, the pre-Brexit migration levels from the EU were nearly 200,000, so the net migration was still over 100,000 Europeans coming to live in England and Wales each year. 

As of 2021, more than a third of the non-indigenous population of England and Wales was from the European Union:

“Those born in the European Union (EU) made up 3.6 million (36.4% of all non-UK born usual residents) of the population, an increase from 2.5 million (32.7%) in 2011 (including Croatia, who joined the EU in 2013).”

Future Information 

On the 27th of October 2022, the ONS published the following statement about the way they publish census data by ethnicity and nationality:

“We’re changing the way we produce population & migration statistics to include all available data, including upcoming #Census2021 results. As part of this, we’re discontinuing our Population of the UK by country of birth and nationality series.”

This was linked to an article which states: 

“Administrative data from HM Revenue and Customs' (HMRC's) Migrant Worker Scan (MWS) linked to Pay As You Earn Real Time Information, recently used to weight the non-UK born population in the Annual Population Survey (APS), only provides information to June 2021 because of an underlying data issue with the MWS. Therefore, population growth for non-UK born and non-British nationals from the APS beyond June 2021 will not represent real changes until the data issue with the MWS is fixed.  

We are transforming the way we produce population and migration statistics to make best use of all available data. The Labour Force Survey (LFS) is also undergoing a transformation to make further improvements to labour market statistics to improve quality, granularity and timeliness. 

As part of this transformation journey, we are reviewing the best methods to produce estimates of the UK population. Therefore, the population of the UK by country of birth and nationality series using the APS will be discontinued. This means the next release for year ending June 2022, scheduled for 24 November 2022, will not go ahead.”

It seems that we may not get the full census breakdown of the ethnicity of the United Kingdom from the 2021 census, and the results of future censuses are in doubt.