The UK’s Demographic Future

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

That this House takes note of the Common Good Foundation and Centre for Policy Studies report Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow, published in July 2025, and of the implications of projected population growth for the UK’s demographic future.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

In introducing this debate, I give all best wishes to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, for his valedictory speech.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con) (Valedictory Speech)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her good wishes; I hope she will still feel the same at the end of my speech.

The issue of population change and its consequences has long been an interest of mine, because I believe that successive Governments have failed to give the topic sufficient strategic analysis and attention. In a country where we appear to want to plan for almost everything, we conspicuously fail to plan for one of the essential building blocks of our society: the number of people living in this country.

Over the past 10 years, I have published three reports trying to analyse this issue in as transparent and evidence-based a way as I could manage. The report before your Lordships’ House today is the third of them and provides an appropriate bookend to my time here. I put on record my sincere thanks to the Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms—the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy—and my own Chief Whip, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, for enabling the scheduling of this debate.

I have not so far had the pleasure of debating with the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson. I hope she will forgive me for saying that as this is a valedictory debate, I hope that when she comes to reply she will not confine herself to a speaking note that might just say, “We inherited a broken system from the party opposite; give us three years and we will have fixed it”. I hope that she will instead spend some time genuinely considering the issues and concerns that I and others will raise.

We all know that this issue is not susceptible to piecemeal, short-term solutions, which are often produced to meet a particular crisis. By contrast, it requires careful strategic analysis conducted in a transparent, evidence-based way, which should lead to discussions in Parliament. This, in turn, will reassure the many concerned members of our population. In short, we need to create space for what can best be described as the wisdom of the crowd to make itself felt, and so marginalise the unrealistic and often unpleasant views at either end of the spectrum.

The impacts of demographic change are very long term. In the world of demography, yesterday is 2000 and so we are today living with the consequences of the decisions made by the Blair Government in the early 2000s. Similarly, tomorrow will be 2045, when our successors will have to assess the results of what was called the Boris wave, when they have become fully apparent. That is why my report is called Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow.

Since this is a topic where every word counts, let me define two of them. First, the “settled population” means people who have a legal right to be in the UK and expect to spend all, or substantially all, of the rest of their lives here. It is not, as some will immediately allege, another word for “white”, since close to 20% of the UK’s population is now made up of minority communities, many of whom are not white. But whatever their colour, this is a group that polling shows has a high level of concern that their interests and the interests of their children are being overlooked and too often sacrificed to short-term political expediency.

Secondly, the word “immigrant” has become a loaded term, as in, “I’m an immigrant and I’m proud”, as opposed to, “Those immigrants down the road”—not so proud. So I prefer to use the phrase “new arrivals”. Of course, I understand and appreciate the moral imperative that drives those new arrivals, many of whom have been here a long time and have benefited from a life in the UK, to be concerned about our trying to close the door on those seeking to follow them. While I recognise that moral imperative, it is unarguable that numbers and scale matter. However sensitive and painful it is, the key point of numbers has to be recognised and taken into account in our discussions.

That takes us to the heart of the demographic challenge we face. As a result of a series of events from which none of the major political parties can escape responsibility—some being deliberate policy decisions and others being forced on us by outside events, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine—over the 30 years since 1995 the population of this country has risen from 58 million to 69.5 million, an increase of 20% or about 11.5 million people. What do 11.5 million people look like? The population of Greater Manchester is 2.8 million, so we have added over four Manchesters in that time.

Drilling into the issue of housing, since we live 2.4 people per dwelling, we have to have built 4.8 million homes to house these new arrivals before we tackle any of the shortages of housing for our settled population. If noble Lords want a snapshot of how the country is changing, 31% of all children born in this country last year were born to mothers who were not born here; 25 years ago, that figure was 10% or 11%.

Where do we go from here, and what does the future look like? The ONS suggests that, between now and 2036, we will have a 10% increase in our population—that is, 6.6 million people. The growth is then expected to slow over the period to 2045. But by 2045, we will have 76 to 77 million people, and we will have overtaken Germany as the most populous country in Europe.

Where will these people have come from? Of course, there is the natural increase—the excess of births over deaths. Leaving that aside, because of the level of press publicity, the man in the street will likely point to refugees and asylum seekers. In this, he would be wrong, because, historically, the main components have come from two sources we have always controlled. First, UK higher education has built a business model based on recruiting an increasing number of foreign students, of whom 30% to 40% morph into our workforce at the end of their studies. Secondly, British industry uses overseas recruitment—the Migration Advisory Committee described it as the “default option”—and has ruthlessly exploited the shortage occupation list, which enables you to recruit from overseas with lower wages. As I speak, there are 61 categories on that shortage occupation list. Many will be familiar, but not all—how many Members of your Lordships’ House realise that we have a shortage of dancers and choreographers?

It is worth noting also that our demographic challenge is made more acute by the fact of our being a relatively small island. For example, France has 120 people per square kilometre. The UK has 279, which is more than double. England has 438, so it is nearly four times as densely populated as France.

For my third report, I concluded that, to increase credibility, I should not write alone. I was lucky to get support from the Common Good Foundation and the Centre for Policy Studies, respectively, a centre-left and a centre-right think tank, to support me. I asked a number of experts in the world of demography to discuss the demographic challenge as seen through their eyes. It is, of course, impossible to summarise nine detailed chapters in this debate. But the overall conclusion of them all was that, as a country, we have not been taking a sufficiently coherent strategic approach to this particular problem.

Further, since this demographic challenge is one faced by all countries, I made contact with three countries overseas: the Netherlands; Japan, which is facing the opposite problem of a rapidly declining population; and Denmark, which has now become the poster boy for immigration policy.

Many interesting ideas emerged. Denmark, perhaps slightly sadly, enforces very strict conditions on new arrivals and moves them on if they are not complied with. Rather depressingly, when I asked the Danish, where those people go to, they said that they nearly all go to the UK, because the word on the street is that, once you get to the UK, no one will check anything and you are free to do what you like.

I believed that there was interest among the public, so I asked YouGov to do some polling. The results were that 70% thought that the Government have no plan to manage population growth, and 56% support the idea of creating some official body. An important message for the three parties in your Lordships’ House is that only 10% thought that the Labour Party had the best answers, only 8% thought that the Conservative Party had the best answers and only 5% thought that the Liberal Democrats had the best answers. By contrast, 22% supported Reform.

So, what can be done? We have to have the courage to recognise that the irrevocable nature of demographic change means that departmentally based solutions will never provide a coherent response. We have to cut through what I call the “firewalls”, which suggest that the issues raised by demographic change are not appropriate subjects for discussion. We have to call out cases where any proper discussion is closed down as a result of what Dame Sara Khan called in her government-commissioned review on social cohesion, “freedom-restricting harassment”. Thus, as an example, while it is perfectly acceptable to discuss policies to help achieve net zero, it is not acceptable to suggest that adding 6 million people to this country might impede achieving that objective.

There is a strong argument for creating a new strategic body to be called the office for demographic change, or perhaps the office for population sustainability, which would subsume within it the existing Migration Advisory Committee. It would be tasked with learning from the past to collect evidence about and analyse the consequences of past policies, looking to the future impacts of likely population changes—economic, environmental, ecological and societal—and, finally, undertaking research into demographic developments and learn from best practice around the world. It would not, however, be a policy-making body. This new authority would be a stand-alone body but would report to the Cabinet Office. It would report, at least annually, to Parliament.

The new body would help create conditions for a broader, better and more balanced discussion about demography. For example, is there a maximum level of annual population increase we can absorb without prejudicing the position of our settled population? What can be done to improve the data sources, which are clearly inadequate? Is there an argument for seeking to increase the birth rate among our existing population? And so on.

To conclude, Governments may choose to continue to muddle along, but recent events have shown a rising public temperature, and these pressures seem set to increase. It is not just individual events such as those at Crowborough or Epping but about the public mood. So the issue seems set to become a major driver of political change. Writing in the Times on 15 September, Trevor Phillips’ article was headlined, “Dismiss Unite the Kingdom march at your peril”, and was subtitled:

“Calling this movement the product of extremist rabble-rousers will no longer do. Mainstream politicians must wake up”.


Successive Governments have tried ignoring the problem, insinuating that those who are concerned about it are closet racists, suggesting that nothing can be done about it, and that if only everyone would stop talking about it the problem would go away, or, finally, making aspirational statements with no measurable follow-through.

The mainstream parties here in your Lordships’ House now need to step up with a comprehensive, measurable response to public concerns. My report suggests one such approach. But if we fail to respond, events will likely become increasingly ugly as wilder spirits make the running. I can think of no more pressing internal threat to the long-term prosperity and harmony of the society of this country than our future population levels. So I am proud and pleased to be able to hold my valedictory debate on this topic, and I beg to move.

Palestine Statehood (Recognition) Bill [HL]

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 14th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Bolton (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, on bringing forward this Private Member’s Bill and on her powerful introduction, and I am delighted to support her. In doing so, I declare my interests as president of Medical Aid for Palestinians and president of the Palestine Britain Business Council.

As we have heard, the history of the United Kingdom and the Palestinian territories is deeply entwined. Through that shared history, we have a special responsibility to the Palestinian people, and we should discharge that responsibility, which is long overdue, by the recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state alongside the sovereign State of Israel. That is because we cannot champion the rights of others around the world, supporting them in their stand for freedom and self-determination, and then deny those same rights to the Palestinian people. Recognition should be the first step in the process, not the last. Despite all that has happened since we missed the opportunity to recognise Palestine in 2011, it remains the only step that leads to genuine peace and prosperity and a stable and secure future for both Palestine and Israel.

This is not an either/or situation. Contrary to what some might wish for, the Palestinians and the Israelis are not going anywhere, so we have to find a way forward. The Palestinians are not asking for anything extraordinary. None of those whom I have had the pleasure and privilege of meeting and working with over many years—it is worth reminding your Lordships’ House that the majority of Palestinians are ordinary people, just like you and me, from the young girls in a refugee camp in Gaza debating rights and responsibilities in such a thoughtful and engaging manner that if you closed your eyes you could have been in any classroom in the West, to the entrepreneurial men and women running remarkable businesses but hampered by the problems of occupation, to the farmers tending their animals and harvesting their olives and dates against a background of settler violence, to the courageous medics who are not just treating today’s physical and mental injuries but still treating the wounds, scars and amputations of injuries incurred over many years, to the students, academics, musicians and those who play sports who just want to travel without asking permission of Israel, which is often denied—are asking for anything extraordinary. They are simply asking to be able to enjoy the freedoms and life experience that we all cherish and often take for granted.

Much of what I have said repeats the words I have used in your Lordships’ House over many years. It is dispiriting and beyond tragic given the horrors of the past 18 months in Israel and Gaza that they still need to be said. I hope the Minister, whom I hold in the highest regard, will support the Bill. If that is not the case, please can she explain the timetable for the Government’s manifesto commitment to recognise Palestine? The only silver lining for me in losing the general election was the thought of the Palestinian people being given not just their rightful recognition but the hope they so desperately need to ensure a peaceful future for all.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 15th May 2023 Lords Chamber

Amendment 47 withdrawn.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

My Lords, if Amendment 48 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 49 for reasons of pre-emption.

Amendment 48

Moved by

EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Bolton (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure, almost four years after we first began debate on the famous Article 50 in your Lordships’ House, to say a few words on the agreement reached between the United Kingdom and the European Union in the final days of 2020, an agreement that fulfilled our promise to the electorate and which, as my noble friend Lord Wharton of Yarm said in his splendid maiden speech, leaves us free to forge our own future. I thank my noble friend the Minister for his thoughtful opening to this debate.

The process of disentangling ourselves from the institutions of the EU after so many years was never going to be easy, but the job must have been made all the more difficult with every step being queried, challenged and second-guessed. I pay enormous tribute to the patience and negotiating skills of all those involved in delivering this agreement. As one of the Prime Minister’s trade envoys, I am privileged to witness on a regular basis the ingenuity and quality of our companies and institutions, and the professionalism and expertise of our trade officials. I believe that, whether we had achieved a trade deal or not, our companies would have adapted and flourished.

I far prefer that we have negotiated this unique deal with no tariffs or quotas, but, as we heard from my noble friend Lady Warsi, there is still much practical detail to be addressed. For me and, I suspect, most people, including our friends in the wider world, the test of a good Brexit deal was always going to be the kind of relationship we could build with our European friends and neighbours, especially in these frightening and testing times for us all. Last week at Second Reading of the European Union Bill, my noble friend Lord Maude of Horsham said that there is now an opportunity to take our relationship forward in a better spirit than when we were in the EU. I could not agree more, and I applaud my right honourable friend the Prime Minister for delivering a deal that does just that.

Economy Update

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office and the Treasury (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

I thank both noble Lords for their comments. I will first address the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe.

The Government have always made it clear that economic support would continue past the end of October and had announced the Job Support Scheme to do just that. Extending the CJRS, or furlough, responds to the latest economic conditions and the national lockdown in England and similar restrictions in the devolved Administrations. The Government have acknowledged that they have not been able to support everyone in the exact way they would want, but they have been proactive in addressing gaps in the scheme where possible. This partially addresses the points of the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer; for example, under the second SEISS grant, self-employed traders facing reduced demand or who are temporarily unable to trade due to Covid were made eligible. It has not been practically possible to include certain groups without introducing unacceptable fraud risks.

The vast majority of the British public has come together, followed the law and helped to prevent the spread of the virus. We are confident that communities will rise to the next challenge and play their part as we come together to fight the second wave this winter. The noble Lord asked about compliance. To ensure that people can continue complying, we have introduced a comprehensive package of support, including extended SSP to employees when they are asked to self-isolate, and for workers on low incomes a one-off payment of £500 under the self-isolation support payment scheme.

Individuals who are asked to self-isolate by NHS Test and Trace because they have tested positive for coronavirus, or been identified as a contact, may be eligible for the test and trace support payment provided that they meet the other criteria. If individuals are identified as a contact by the NHS Covid-19 app but they have not been contacted by NHS Test and Trace, they cannot currently apply for the scheme. App users are anonymous, which means that the local authorities that administer the payment scheme cannot confirm that they have been asked to self-isolate. Further work is ongoing to determine if the scheme can be extended to individuals who have been identified as a contact only through the app, while adhering to data privacy requirements.

We have legislated to prevent employers from requiring workers, including agency workers, subject to the duty to self-isolate to attend work. Employers who breach this are subject to a £1,000 fine, rising to £10,000 for repeat offences.

The noble Baroness asked about the potential for negative interest rates. I cannot predict the future, but the noble Baroness will know that we are very against that at the moment. I hope that it can be avoided. I share her concern that negative interest rates put pressure on savers beyond that which has existed over the last 10 years of very low interest rates. It is illustrative of the balancing act that the Government must take between support for people during this crisis and the long-term impact on the Government.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

My Lords, we now come to the 30 minutes allocated for Back-Bench questions. I ask that questions and answers be brief so that I can call the maximum number of speakers.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Friday 23rd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

My Lords, I have to tell your Lordships that in the first Division the number voting Not Content was in fact 129, not 127 as announced.

Motion

Moved by

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Without committing my noble friend, who is sitting on my left, the Government are open to further discussions, through the usual channels, with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Low of Dalston]

I accede to what has been said: the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has reached an agreement through the usual channels. The House has sent a strong signal today that it wants to see further time made available for the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. In the hope that that request will be acceded to, I will not press the point that we take further time in Committee today on the noble Lord’s Bill.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Low, for being so eager to resume the House.

Motion agreed.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Bolton (Con)]

My Lords, no one ever said that the process of leaving the EU was going to be easy, and we are in for some interesting days and discussions during the further stages of this Bill. As my noble friend the Leader of the House explained so well, put simply the Bill seeks to ensure that by the time we leave the EU, laws which currently govern our everyday lives and give protection to us as individuals, businesses and institutions will be transferred to UK law to ensure continuity and certainty.

In this process, there are those who fear that the Government are making a power grab and that hard fought-for rights and obligations might be threatened. Yet others such as my noble friend Lady Eaton would like to see that process built on to provide greater freedoms for local communities. These are understandable issues and concerns and it is right that, during debate on the Bill, they should be explored to see whether improvements are needed. But what would not be right would be for this House to seek to frustrate that process and to set it at odds with the elected House. It was most reassuring to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, and other noble Lords across the House that this is not their intention. I hope that intention will hold when we start to get into the detail of the most contentious issues.

It is inevitable that throughout today’s debate there has been discussion of our future economic relationship with the European Union. The noble Lords, Lord Mandelson and Lord Hain, along with my noble friend Lady Wheatcroft and others, have said how important it is that we stay in the single market and the customs union. Staying in either of these would mean accepting many of the rules and regulations of the EU that were disliked by the British people and instrumental in leading to a no vote in the referendum, without the corresponding balance of a seat at the negotiating table to argue our corner. If that were to be the case, it would be legitimate to ask what all this palaver had been about.

This is especially the case with the customs union, membership of which would not allow us to negotiate our own free trade agreements with other countries—however difficult those may be, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton. Yet the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook database calculates that 90% of future growth will come from outside the European Union. It is these countries which will give the UK the opportunities for new business and increased prosperity. So it is vital that we as a country are free to negotiate and strike deals throughout the world. I declare my interest as one of the Prime Minister’s trade envoys.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds and my noble friend Lord Bridges both asked, “What kind of Britain do we want to live in?”. It may surprise some of your Lordships to know that in the referendum I voted to remain, not for economic reasons but for those things so eloquently expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, such as tolerance and friendship—the things that the noble Lords, Lord Triesman and Lord Winston, hold so dearly. It was also for the collaboration in a host of areas which I felt brought stability in a world which does not always have a surplus of that. I know that your Lordships might think me a bright-eyed optimist but I am encouraged that these relationships will flourish. I am trying to look at it in a different way now. But I am encouraged—I know noble Lords might think that I am a bright-eyed optimist—that these relationships will flourish, and I am trying to look at it in a different way now. As my noble friend Lady Finn is fond of saying, we were in with opt-outs, now we will be out with opt-ins. There will be many areas of future co-operation, not least on our security and intelligence operations, which are as essential for the security of Europe as they are for us.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, whom I consider a good friend, along with many others is passionate in his desire to stay in the European Union, and I fully understand that. But we have had that debate, and I fear that a second referendum would weaken our negotiating hand and extend uncertainty. As we have already heard from my noble friend Lord Hill of Oareford, business leaders are saying that the political paralysis caused by the process of Brexit depresses them more than Brexit itself. People just want us to get on with it.

I sincerely hope that we can all come together and that the creative and ingenious among our number, many of whom are bitterly disappointed by Brexit, will focus their talents and energies on helping to make this Bill and Brexit a success in the future interests of our country.

Debate adjourned until tomorrow at 10 am.

Universal Credit

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I do not have the time—understandably, given the pressure of other debates—to challenge so many of the assertions the Minister made in her reply which I have to say, from my work on the subject, are not well founded. I thank everybody who has taken part in today’s debate. The meaningful, moving, compassionate, well-informed examples and evidence that have come from around the House show how many of your Lordships are seeking to walk in the footsteps of claimants rather than sign up automatically—I am not accusing the Minister of this—to leafy government assurances which from my research are not supported by the evidence.

None the less, we have a Budget coming. I say to the Minister—I know she and her colleagues in the department will fight for this—that there is a choice. The Government can choose in the Budget to align themselves with the just about managing and the even more deprived—

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

I apologise, but the time allotted for this debate has now elapsed, and I must put the Question. The Question is that this Motion be agreed to.

Motion agreed.

Housing and Planning Bill

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Lords Chamber

123A: Clause 146, page 75, line 23, leave out subsection (1) and insert—
“( ) Regulations under section 145 may—(a) equire a designated person (subject to any specified exceptions) to process an application for planning permission if chosen to do so by an applicant;(b) provide that, where an application for planning permission is to be or has been processed by a designated person, any connected application must (subject to any specified exceptions) also be processed by that person;(c) allow a responsible planning authority to take over the processing of an application for planning permission, or a connected application, in specified circumstances.”

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)]

My Lords, if Amendment 123A is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 123B for reasons of pre-emption.

Amendment 123A agreed.

--- Later in debate ---

123D: Clause 146, page 75, line 42, leave out paragraph (g)

[The Deputy Speaker]

My Lords, if Amendment 123D is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 123E for reasons of pre-emption.

Amendments 123C and 123D agreed.

Israel and Palestine

Baroness Morris of Bolton Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Morris of Bolton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. We must never forget that this is not simply a question of one people seeking autonomy from another. As Max Blumenthal said in his book Goliath, this is about,

“people living under a regime of separation, grappling with the consequences of ethnic division in a land with no defined borders”.

To that I would add that it is also about people living under the daily grind of occupation.

Last year Laurence Brass, the former treasurer of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, spoke out about the miserable conditions he witnessed when he visited the West Bank. Following criticism of his statements he was supported by former Israeli ambassadors and a former Israeli Attorney-General, who praised his willingness to see the grim reality on the ground in the West Bank—and to that we must add the appalling situation in Gaza.

Time is running out and I fear that the resilience and amazing good humour of the Palestinian people is at breaking point. With the help of British aid, the Palestinian Authority has built the necessary structures for statehood and, despite the longest occupation in modern history, the Palestinians are highly educated and have universities, hospitals, a rich cultural life and leaders who believe in peace.

I would love to see the Government recognise Palestine as a first step towards breathing new life into the peace process. It is in the interests of all who love Israel, Palestine and the wider Middle East that we, as a Government, and our international partners do all that we can to support the moderate, secular Palestinian authority.