The Spectator's Notes

Wednesday, 14th March 2007

It is a disgrace that David Coleman, Professor of Demography at Oxford, is being hounded by a government-funded body called Oxford Student Action for Refugees. Osar wants him out of his job for racism, and the ‘evidence’ is his link with the pressure group Migration Watch. Others have written, rightly, about what a good and respectable man Professor Coleman is. It should be added that Migration Watch is good and respectable too. I do not myself agree with its contention that immigration contributes little to Britain’s prosperity. Cheap and willing labour which would otherwise be short must be an economic advantage. But Migration Watch has been the pioneer of factual truth in this area. It noticed that successive governments were reporting and projecting the scale of immigration with desperate inaccuracy. The government predicted that there would be 13,000 Eastern Europeans coming to Britain as a result of our admitting them after EU entry, and excoriated Migration Watch for saying otherwise. Today the official figure is 580,000. Migration Watch also highlighted ‘chain immigration’ (arranged marriages, etc.) from the Indian subcontinent. Now, the government confirms, the number of spouses admitted has nearly doubled in ten years. It is the Home Office that should be sacked for the damage it has done to race relations, not Professor Coleman.

***

Lord Phillips, the Lord Chief Justice, wants shorter sentences for murder because the prisons will otherwise be ‘full of geriatric lifers’. Lord Phillips is 69. Lord Bingham, the senior Lord of Appeal, is 74. Even groovy, lefty Lord of Appeal Lord Hoffmann is 72. It is unwise for judges to disparage geriatric lifers.