An official projection released by the United Kingdom has revealed that migration will increase its population by three million.
The Office for National Statistics said it anticipates there will be 69.4 million people living here by mid 2028 — 4.5 per cent up on the 66.4 million total at the end of June last year.
The statisticians said that 73 per cent of the rise would come from migration with 190,000 people a year moving to this country over the decade.
The rest of the population boom will be down to more births occurring than deaths, although some of the former include children born to migrants. This means that when this “indirect” impact is taken into account, migration is expected to account for 79 per cent of the population growth in the UK over the next decade.
Today’s projections also suggest that the UK population will pass 70 million during 2031 and hit 72.4 million by mid 2043 as this country grows at a significantly faster rate than France and Germany, its largest European counterparts.
Unveiling the figures today, Andrew Nash, from the population projections unit at the Office for National Statistics, said: “The UK population is projected to grow by three million people by 2028. This assumes migration will have a greater impact on the size of the population than the combination of births and deaths.
“The population is increasingly ageing and this trend will continue. However, because of the expected rise in the State Pension age to 67, it is projected that slightly fewer than one in five people will be of pensionable age in 2028, a similar proportion to today,” Mr Nash added.
Today’s projections do not include any assessment of any future impact of Brexit and base their assumption of net migration each year of 190,000 on the average annual inflow over the past 25 years.
The stasticians say that this means that by the middle of 2028 an extra 5.4 million people will have migrated into the UK, while 3.3 million will have left, giving a net inflow of 2.1 million.
There will be 7.2 million births and 6.4 million deaths during the same period.
