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Managed Migration

It will not surprise hon. Members if I approach the matter from a slightly different perspective—from the north. In Scotland we have chronic demographic problems. As I said to the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley), we have the fastest falling population in Europe. For the first time in a century our population will drop below the symbolic 5 million mark by 2017, and is expected to fall below 4.5 million by 2041. We are the only constituent part of the United Kingdom with population decline on such a scale. For example, in the same period—up to 2041—we expect a population increase of some 7 million, which is a rise of 12 per cent., in England. In the past decade we have attracted only 4.7 per cent. of migrants, although our total population is 8.5 per cent. of the United Kingdom population. Our demographic problems have been described as the single biggest challenge that faces Scotland in the medium to long term. Those are not my words but those of Labour First Minister Jack McConnell. He does not get many things right, but that assertion was absolutely correct. It is clear from those headline figures that something is not working. If any constituent part of the United Kingdom needs creative and imaginative solutions to address this decline, it is Scotland. It is also clear that Scotland’s problems are so different from the basic challenges faced by the rest of the United Kingdom that they must have Scottish-based solutions. The simple fact is that we need people to come to Scotland. For our population merely to stand still, we shall need between 8,000 and 10,000 people to come each year for the next decade. If we do not achieve that, there will be massive consequences for every sector of our community. There will be a huge impact on our general economy, and deterioration in our community infrastructure and public services. Scotland will simply lose its competitiveness compared with other small nations in Europe. To see how other small nations deal with such pressures, we need only to look across the Irish sea to the Republic of Ireland, a country in charge of its own immigration policy. It faced massive problems in the first half of the last century, with high levels of emigration from its shores, but it is now attracting migrants on a large scale. In fact, it has had nearly five times as many migrants as Scotland over the past few years. It is now introducing a green card system that will allow it to tackle its population problems much more impressively than we can in Scotland. I detect in the general UK-wide immigration policy an underlying attempt to keep people out and to discourage them from coming here—I am sure that the Minister will say that that is not the case, and I respect the fact that the points-based system is an attempt to address the problems—but that is entirely the opposite of what Scotland needs. We need people to come in, and we need policies to attract them.