Commenting on the report released by the Office for Budgetary Responsibility, Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migration Watch UK, said:
“Once again the OBR has given only part of the story. It is true that, in the medium term, migration provides a larger pool of working age people which increases tax revenues. But, of course, migrants also get old so to maintain the same ratio of working age people to older people would require an ever increasing number of migrants each year.
On their immigration assumption of 140,000 a year we would add 14 million to the UK population in their 50 year time scale which is nearly a quarter of our present population.
All studies of the pension problem have concluded that the only way to tackle it is to increase the pension age as expectation of life increases. Furthermore the public have made it perfectly clear that the social and environmental consequences of continued mass immigration are unacceptable to them.
It is time that economists understood this.”
