Migrant births will account for 60 per cent of all population growth within five years

Experts released analysis projecting that, of the 5.5 million people expected to be added to the UK population between now and 2021, 2.8 million will either be immigrants or babies born to mothers from overseas.

High levels of immigration, which the Bow Group predicted will rise to 724,000 a year at the end of the decade, will boost Britain’s population to a staggering 74.3 million by mid-2039.

But only 541,000 babies are expected to be born to UK mothers in 2021, meaning British births will account for just 48.3 per cent population growth that year. In contrast, the number born to immigrant mothers will rise to 225,350 within five years. By 2036 it is projected that immigrant births will account for almost a third of all babies born in the UK.

The Bow Group, a Conservative supporting think-tank, warned such numbers will have an “extremely significant cultural impact” on the UK and urged the Government to rethink its border policy.

Its projections, based on figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), will further ignite the debate about high levels of immigration which featured prominently in Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. The Bow Group said people are worried about the impact of migration on public services such as the NHS.

The think-tank’s report quotes ONS data which shows that, of the 9.7 million increase expected in the UK population by 2039, more than half (51 per cent) will be attributable to net migration alone. Amazingly the same report concluded that a staggering 83 per cent of population growth between 2001 and 2012 was due to the direct and indirect effects of migration.
And the numbers of people arriving in the UK from overseas rose by an astonishing 91 per cent between 1991 and 2015 - up from just 329,000 a quarter of a century ago to 631,000 last year.

The Bow Group said the Government’s insistence on publishing net migration statistics, which deduct the number of expats leaving the country from the level of migrant arrivals, is obscuring the true impact of immigration on Britain.

That is because the biggest contingent of emigrants is made up of British born people - they accounted for 43 per cent in 2014 - meaning that the proportional impact of immigration on the population is understated by net migration figures. The Group is now calling on ministers to publish gross figures instead - the total number of migrant arrivals in the UK every year - because they give a better indication of the cultural challenges immigration poses.

The think-tank argues that gross statistics also give the public a more complete picture of the potential future growth of the migrant population, which has a fertility rate of 2.08 children per woman, rather than the UK-born rate of 1.76.

Bow Group chairman, Cllr Ben Harris-Quinney, told Express.co.uk: “For at least 20 years the UK government, of both major parties, has ignored the huge level of public concern over immigration policy. Much of this concern has been over the sheer numbers of people coming into the country, and the extent to which British society can acclimatise to the significant majority of its population growth being from immigration, without losing our distinct sense of nationhood, culture and unity.”

He added: “These concerns are not those of fruitcakes, racists and lunatics, but of 77 per cent of the British populace. They are valid concerns, and they relate not just to wage depression and pressure on infrastructure, but also to the scale and pace of the cultural shift that has occurred.

“The cultural impact of that level of immigration to the United Kingdom will be extremely significant, and a government of any colour will not abate public concern over migration until that very real issue is recognised front and centre of their immigration policy.”

PS A very large part of the increased population growth will be among the Muslim community, whose leaders have openly stated that their aim is to install an Islamic Caliphate in Britain.