UK to have Europe's biggest population: Migration will force us ahead of Germany, says UN
Immigration rates have pushed up population figures in the UK
Britain will overtake Germany as the country with the highest population in Europe, the United Nations predicted yesterday.
The gap of more than 20million people between this country and Germany will be closed by 2050, its analysts said.
By then Britain will also have outstripped France to be home to more people than any other EU nation.
Germany has been the most populous country in Europe since its establishment as a nation 139 years ago.
Britain's population growth comes because of immigration rates that mean this country is and will remain the third greatest destination for migrants in the world, the UN said.
A report by the UN Population Division said Germany's population, currently 82million, will fall to 71million by 2050. Britain's will rise from 61million to 72million, while France's population of 62million will grow to 68 million.
The changes are mainly a result of net migration - the number entering a country as immigrants minus the number leaving as emigrants.
The UN said Britain's net migration rate will be 174,000 people a year until 2050. It is third only to the U.S., which will grow by 1.1million migrants a year, and Canada, which will have 214,000. Germany's net migration rate will be 110,000, while France's will be 100,000 a year.
But Germany's total population will fall because of other factors such as low birth rates and a rapidly ageing population. The analysis comes at a time when England has already become the most crowded country in Europe, passing Holland as the nation with the most people squeezed into every square mile.
Britain's land area is only around two-thirds that of Germany: 93,000 square miles against Germany's 138,000. UN officials said yesterday that their estimates, the 2008 Revision of World Population Prospects, are based on the latest possible information.
'It incorporates the full results of the 2000 round of national censuses and the first reports of censuses released since 2006,' a spokesman said.
The UN net migration predictions are lower than that of the the UK's Office for National Statistics, which estimates net migration into Britain will run at 190,000 a year for the foreseeable future. This would mean Britain would hit 70million by 2028.
The UN projections brought demands for curbs on immigration from MPs in the cross-party Balanced Migration group.
Tory Nicholas Soames and former Labour minister Frank Field said in a statement: 'This is yet more evidence of the pressure that uncontrolled immigration will place on our population, and therefore, on our quality of life.
At least 70 per cent of this increase will be due to immigration. The question for politicians is simple: if you want to stop our country's population rising to unacceptable levels, when will you get a grip on immigration?'
A Home Office spokesman said the Government's new points based system for limiting numbers of economic migrants entering on work permits would cut immigration in future.
'These UN projections predate the sweeping changes we have made to the immigration system, including a tough points based system which allows us to raise or lower the bar according to the needs of the labour market and the country as a whole,' she said.
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