Once again, the sheer folly of Britain’s twin approaches to welfare and immigration has been brought into sharp relief.
New figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development show that Britain saw the largest percentage increase in permanent immigration of any member nation last year, with the inflow rising almost 53 per cent to 746,900.
The equivalent figure for France was 1.1 per cent, while the Netherlands saw a 4.6 per cent decrease. When expressed in terms of raw numbers, Britain saw the second largest inflow at 1.2 million people, with only the USA ahead of it.
While the national conversation on immigration has focused understandably on the boats crossing the Channel, the far larger part of the inflow is legal, driven by Government policy decisions attempting to fuel the economy and maintain the viability of organisations such as care homes and universities.
This apparently vast unmet need for workers sits uncomfortably alongside significant growth in the welfare bill for those out of the labour market.
More than 9 million working-age adults are now neither employed nor looking for work, with more than 30 per cent of their number registered as long-term sick. The result of this trend is that the bill for working-age health-related benefits is set to rise to £63 billion each year by 2028-29, or the equivalent of 2.1 per cent of GDP.
It seems clear that if the Government is to reduce immigration meaningfully, it will also need to tackle the scourge of worklessness, drawing back into the labour market those people who have been trapped in the cycle of dependency.
Unfortunately, it appears that Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall is less interested in reforming the welfare system to reduce the benefits bill and get economically inactive people back into work than she is in reforming the English language.
Ms Kendall suggested that the phrase “economically inactive” was “terrible” and dehumanising of the “real human beings” who underlie the figures, although she did not go so far as to provide an alternative.
Nevertheless, if this is where her attention is focused it bodes poorly for the chances of reform under this Labour Government. It would surely be better to focus instead on fixing a benefits system that threatens to waste human potential, and which will confound any attempt to meaningfully reduce migration.
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