Do we actually have a problem with immigration, population growth and the lack of housing?

Purely for clarification purposes, immigrants are people who are foreign born including the Duke of Edinburgh, the captain of the England cricket team and many other talent business leaders, sports stars and artists. Some immigrants are UK citizens but three quarters are from outside of the EU.

When we discuss immigration it is good to look into how people actually come into the country. The opening up of the UK labour market was one factor. Another was the significant growth of students from abroad entering higher education. More contentious was the expansion from the EU and the accession 8 countries has impacted on the amount of people coming into the UK.

Most migrants come to the UK to work or study. The majority are better educated than the native people, slightly under-employed but by and large they do everything from running international corporations, university professors, bankers and at the other end of the scale carers, flower pickers, and waiters. The health professions have had the highest amount of immigrants.

The impact on GDP per capita has had no significant effect. The impact on unemployment is also zero as the labour market works. The impact on wages amongst unskilled services has been affected but only in relatively small numbers.

Migration is a political issue.

It would be foolish to deny that there have been dramatic changes in the ethnic and cultural make-up of some parts of the UK. The surge in immigration has had an impact on population growth. More people mean more homes, roads, power stations, waste disposal and so on. So the demand for housing depends and the number of households has risen.

The problem is not solely based on population growth rather that house prices are outpacing incomes and since 1975 it has risen faster than most incomes. The rate of house building in England has been lagging behind real incomes and the population growth.

We build houses in the wrong places where there aren’t any people. Many more homes are being built in the north rather than the south. The numbers on the social housing list is on the rise, rent prices have risen due to lack of housing stock. We should not be rationing houses by either price or credit, should we not limit the amount of houses people can own?

The supply of building land is controlled by the local authority, they control housing development. Most constituents do not like housing development and there is not enough financial benefit if they allow the planning to go ahead. The more money a local authority can get they could bribe voters into liking housing development.

Rationing raises the value of land making a field that was worth £10,000 suddenly turns into 6 million pounds. Only around 10 percent of the land is developed in England. So there are some things we could be doing without always blaming migrants for all of this.