The UK’s population has exploded over the last 50 years with over two thirds of that growth coming in the last 20 years, shocking graphs have shown.
Analysis by Facts4EU and GB News of ONS data has revealed there are now 10,993,300 more people in Britain than in 1983, largely due to immigration.
A hefty 71.3 per cent of that number (7,834,000 people) have arrived in the last twenty years, research showed.
The decade from 2003 to 2013 saw the largest population increase as Britain swelled by 4.2million people.
This was in stark comparison to the decade from 1983 to 1993 when Britain grew by a mere 80,100 people, over 50 times less.
Population growth over the last 50 years in each ten year period
Facts4EU
Plotted against a timeline of British Prime Ministers, we see how the growth began in earnestunder Tony Blair before continuing to surge under successive Conservative governments.
It comes after net migration to the UK hit a record 906,000 in the year to June 2023, much higher than previously thought.
For that period, the ONS estimated net migration to be 740,000, a full 166,000- a city the size of York- less than the true figure.
Population growth plotted with Prime Ministers
Facts4EU
It also comes after the ONS released staggering population projections for the UK today.
The independent body projected Britain’s population to reach 72.5million by 2032- a rise of 5million- fuelled entirely by migration and not by births outstripping deaths.
That would see the UK’s population outstrip France’s for the first time since 1997, according to Eurostat’s projection for the French population.
The data shows a growth rate of 7.3 per cent, marginally higher than the 6.1 per cent growth in the previous decade.
UK’s projected population
ONS
Dr Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said: “That’s higher than the average for the 2000s and 2010s, but lower than the recent levels of over 700,000.
“In other words, ONS is assuming that net migration will fall back to a level similar to what the UK has seen in the last ten years.”
Regionally speaking, England’s population is projected to grow more quickly than other UK nations between mid-2022 and mid-2032: by 7.8 per cent, compared with 5.9 per cent for Wales, 4.4 per cent for Scotland and 2.1 per cent for Northern Ireland.
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Projected population growth of each of the UK’s four regions
GBN
Reacting, the Prime Minister’s spokesperson said: “We’re going to publish a white paper to set out a comprehensive plan to end these staggeringly high migration numbers.
“As the prime minister has previously said, we had a supposed cap in place before and it didn’t have any meaningful impact on reducing immigration.
“So he doesn’t think that setting an arbitrary cap, as previous governments have done, is the best way forward in terms of significantly reducing migration.”
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said: “Ten million arrivals over 10 years is far too high. We need a binding legal cap on visas issued each year which is very, very substantially lower than this in order to get the numbers down and under control.
“We must also get more of the nine million economically inactive adults in the UK into the workforce and invest more in technology and mechanisation to end the unsustainable reliance on mass low-skilled migration.”
The ONS stressed the figures are projections – not predictions or forecasts – and warned that real numbers could be higher or lower than suggested.