THE TELEGRAPH: It is one of the voters' greatest concerns - but politicians are turning a deaf ear, says Frank Field.
The economy and immigration are the two big issues that voters wish to see debated at this election. The economy has already featured in the clashes between the main parties. But, despite brief mentions in the manifestos, immigration is the issue that dare not speak its name.
No sensible person is calling for a policy of no immigration. It is the scale of population change, which over the past decade has transformed parts of Britain, that voters wish to make an election issue. A continuation of mass immigration on roughly the present scale will bring the population of the UK to 70 million in 20 years – and the growth won't stop there, unless we are prepared to control drastically the size of net migration. Immigration will account for 70 per cent of this population increase. This is what needs to be tackled.
We have just lived through 10 fat years of public expenditure increases, of a scale we are unlikely ever to see again. Yet, even as most budgets doubled during the past decade, the pressures on our public services due to immigration were plain.
Maternity units are struggling as 25 per cent of all births in England and Wales are to foreign-born mothers – in London that proportion is 50 per cent. Primary schools in some areas have to resort to portable classrooms to cope with new arrivals, and are forced to redirect teachers' time to teaching English rather than ensuring that the weakest pupils succeed. >>> Frank Field | Tuesday, April 13, 2010
