Letters to the Editor | 19 August 2006

Too many or too few?
From K.R. Houston
Sir: Rod Liddle’s assertion (‘Our overpopulation is a catastrophe’, 12 August) that an ever-growing population fuelled by mass immigration is seriously debilitating our quality of life was spot on. But it also highlights the question of why we ever reached this state of affairs in the first place. When my three children were born between 1977 and 1982 — a period which took in both Labour and Conservative governments — new parents were sent a missive from the local health authority stating that while family size was a matter of personal choice, Britain needed to have a population level that it could ‘sustain’. The underlying message was clear: don’t have too many children. A generation later, we are informed that the economy would collapse without a massive influx of immigrants, even though most of them do not speak English or have any capital to invest, and some of them actually wish to do us harm.

Why, then, was the indigenous population of 25/30 years ago encouraged to limit its families, when it could have made up the shortfall in the current workforce without any of the cost and social unrest that has come with mass immigration? Perhaps a politician with experience of government at the time — your new columnist Lord Hattersley, for example — might care to provide an explanation.
K.R. Houston
Edinburgh

From Dr D.R. Cooper
Sir: Of course population policy is a sensitive issue, but Rod Liddle is right to raise it. According to some studies, for long-term sustainability the UK population should be no more than 30 million — about the same as in 1880. Perhaps that is an underestimate, and something like the pre-war level — say, 45 million — could be sustained indefinitely. However, it is certain that the present population of 60 million plus is already too high.
D.R.