The UK’s Demographic Future

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, I wanted to participate in this debate, obviously because of the valedictory speech from the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, but also because it is a very important debate. I thank him for it. As everybody has said, he has been a respected Member of the House and a great servant of it for the past 25 years. He represents all that is best in this House, and we shall miss him.

For part of the 14 years that I have been in the House, I shared accommodation with the noble Lord over in Fielden House. We did not share the office but were in the same area, and we often walked over for votes here. We talked about the merits and demerits of Brexit, three general election campaigns, the prospects for the coalition, and endless battlefield tours that we were going on or had been on.

I have always respected the campaigns that the noble Lord has so bravely led in this House at times. We have mentioned the Albert Hall, but I also remember the Holocaust memorial debate, in which I admired his bravery and his interventions. I could not quite believe that he was going to retire when I talked to him earlier this week. He has always seemed so youthful and energetic, and the only consolation is, as others have said, that we will have the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, continuing here, which will provide a vital link with him. We shall miss his contributions, his courage and his tenacity on issues dear to his heart, such as this one today. I am sure we wish him a very happy and long fourth age outside the House.

I have read the report in total and I thought it was fair, timely and provocative. It has encouraged debate, as we have seen today, and it is an example of the noble Lord’s persistence on an issue that troubles him. I congratulate him on it. The only criticism I have, which is what I am going to talk about today, is that although it mentions Denmark, Japan and Holland, I think it lacks an international, global perspective. The pressure of immigration is from outside. It is not just the demand from inside; it is the pressure from outside. We now live in an age that, sadly, reminds me of the 1930s. The only consolation of the 1930s was that, although it ended in a war, it led to a generation of international co-operation in trying to address some of the problems that the 1930s were dealing with.

Today, we have not mass unemployment but mass insecurity. Due to the huge pace of change, we have international competition and the breakdown of traditional jobs and occupations. We have absolutely stagnant productivity and living standards. We have nationalism, or at least “nation first” has revived itself despite all the efforts after the war to generate international work, provide co-operation and stop the rise of nationalism. We face the situation in this country of an ageing population; there is going to be huge pressure on public spending and the need for care provision on an unimaginable scale as we go forward. Actually, I have to say that I think war in Europe seems closer than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis. Inevitably in that circumstance, immigration and population growth are very high on the agenda. It is not surprising.

It is a key issue of public concern, largely, I think, because people think immigration is out of control, and I have to say that over the last few years it has been, extraordinarily so. I know we have had the problems of Ukraine and Hong Kong, but clearly the numbers show how out of control it has been, and the result is that some of the benefits of immigration are now being challenged. I accept that short-term fixes may be the order of the day, but I agree with the report that it is the long-term trends that need attention.

Whenever we talk about immigration, we must recognise that there have been benefits. The open economy, the dynamic energy that it has given us, the commitment to education and enterprise of people coming here for education have been important to our culture and our community. We have only to see the schools in our immigrant areas of London and elsewhere, where aspiration and commitment to education have actually strengthened. The last generation of my family was half-Dutch. The next generation will be half-Indian and half-Singapore Chinese. That has given our family huge perspective and dynamism. Whenever we talk about these issues, we should not forget the commitment and the contribution that immigrants have made to our nation and still do. We should not underestimate that, nor play it down.

Obviously, the country wants to see immigration under control. People do not like lack of control, and that is what they see—the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, made this point in his speech. The principal problem at the moment is that people think that immigration is out of control. We know that boat migration is not the sole problem of immigration, but at the moment it is defying control and it seems unfair to a fair-minded country that people are trying to jump the queue. It is only one small part of the problem, but it attracts attention and focus and we need to stop it. The Government have been trying to do that and I support their efforts in doing it, but it will not be the sole issue going forward.

On the problem with the boats, I have to ask whether Brexit has made it harder. I think it has, because the French are not wholeheartedly behind us and they do not have the pressure of the EU to bring them into line, as they would if we were a member of the EU. We cannot tackle the gangs because we are outside Europol and do not have the intelligence, and “Take back control” has proved to be a complete illusion. In reality, immigration cannot be solved by one country. Sovereignty is not actually very powerful when dealing with the issue, because all the pressure is coming from outside and, unless Europe can address the numbers coming across the Mediterranean, it will not be easy to stop the numbers coming across the channel.

Immigration is an international problem. If we do not accept that or have an international perspective in dealing with it, we are missing a trick. Are we assessing, for example, the cutbacks that we and the USA are now making to overseas aid on birth control in Africa? That will be a key issue. It is suffering huge cutbacks and women are unable to get the help that would be available from overseas aid programmes, so we are worsening the problem and the pressure of immigration. Some think that we should pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights. I accept that it will be difficult to get consensus on reform. There is international recognition that it needs redrafting, but withdrawal from such international engagement will simply make the problem worse.

In finishing, I will mention one final aspect of immigration. We have not had much discussion of students and the dependence of our university sector on overseas students. In my view, students are not the problem because their time here is transitory, but the report makes the excellent point that the problem is that they move on to work visas and become settled, which contributes to permanent migration. We should separate out the student figures when talking about the total numbers of net migration. There are huge benefits for our university sector in having these overseas students—we know about soft power—but we need to deal with people staying on simply because we need their skills and our own people have not been trained to fill them.

I welcome this debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for his service and contribution, and I send him every good wish for the future.