The duel: Is the UK overpopulated?

Certainly by the standards of western Europe. The citizens of Hong Kong and Bangladesh live far more densely, but I doubt whether the citizens of the UK would wish to live similarly. And we must anticipate, unless policy changes, that the UK’s population density will continue to increase. This natural growth—the excess of births over deaths—currently runs at 115,000 per annum. Those children will in due course need schools, homes, offices and hospitals.

In the late 1990s, when the Blair government decided to encourage large-scale immigration, the population of the UK was 58.3m—at last count it was 66.8m. The Office for National Statistics’ projection for 25 years from now is 73m plus. Over half a century our population will have increased by 25 per cent—a significant figure in a country with some very densely-populated regions. Around 2050, the UK will overtake Germany to have the largest population in Europe, and England will overtake the Netherlands to have the greatest population density.

But the UK is not simply at risk of becoming overpopulated—73 per cent of the country believes it to be already! The electorate can be denounced as wrong and ignored, which has serious ramifications for democracy, or it can be seriously engaged with. My view is we opt for the latter, which is why the government must urgently tackle this issue or risk widening the gap between people’s expectations of policy and its delivery, and fostering even more extreme politics.

Most of the arguments in favour of a growing population focus on economics. One can argue whether these are well founded. But vanishingly little weight is given to inevitable impacts on our environment, ecology and society. My own preferred solution is to establish an independent authority, the Office for Demographic Change (ODC), where rational, evidence-based discussions can take place, and from which carefully considered policy decisions can flow.

The question of what it means to be overpopulated was asked—and answered—by Thomas Malthus in 1798. Human population, he noted, grew at an exponential rate, while the quantity of food grew at a linear rate. An overpopulated world was one where the number of humans was growing faster than the rate at which their lives could be sustained. Ironically, shortly before Malthus’s work was published, the industrial revolution began to take off in Britain, setting off a lightning-fast round of technological developments that made it possible to avert famine, for example by shipping food to where it was needed most. Infant mortality began to fall sharply, if not uniformly.

Today, of course, a dense population does not imply poverty as in Malthus’s time. On the contrary, data from Eurostat shows GDP per head in the Netherlands (with 511 people per square km) at 128 per cent of the EU average, that of Belgium (377 people per sq/km) at 117 per cent, while that of Britain (275 people per sq/km) is at 105 per cent.

Moreover, the number of projected British births is hardly likely to lead to disaster; with fertility rates at 1.6 children per woman aged 15 to 44 years, Britain is not even producing the 2.1 children needed to keep the population stable when life expectancy is constant. The fastest-growing segment of the population is those of retirement age: over time, elderly folk will grow to be a larger percentage of the population than they are today.

Your proposed solution—an “Office for Demographic Change”—is little more than a thinly-disguised, pseudoscientific mechanism tailored for those hoping to limit immigration, even at the price of an economic hit. Already, new “points-based” rules will take effect from January 2021. The Office for Budget Responsibility calculates that lower immigration numbers will translate into a loss of income tax and National Insurance receipts that will reach £0.6bn in 2024-5. It is easy to insist that the UK is already overpopulated if you ignore how curbing migration will hit current residents in the pocket.

Yes: Gosh, that is a tired, narrow and dated response. First, a proper demographic policy has to include a forward look. So we need to plan for the fact that by the 2040s, England will have overtaken the Netherlands as the most densely populated country in Europe, and the UK will have overtaken Germany (which has a land area one and a half times the size of this country) to become the most populous.

As for Malthus, should we really fall back on an 18th-century definition to rebut worries in 2020? Is merely “sustaining life” really the top priority of government? Should we not consider wellbeing in its broadest sense, to give every one of our citizens the ability to thrive and the space in which to achieve this?

Next, your economic arguments are mostly ill-founded. GDP, beloved by politicians as some sort of virility symbol, is a poor measurement. Our population has gone up by eight millionplus in the last 25 years, so if total GDP had not gone up that would be astonishing. Meanwhile, the real wages of the bottom 10 per cent are now 12 per cent below those of 2008. We need to rethink our approach by drilling down to assess the full economic impacts of population change, and also taking into account the environmental, ecological and societal aspects that play such a large part in human health and happiness.

Squeezing more people into this country has undesirable consequences. No one enjoys sitting in traffic, missing out on a school place for their child or struggling to get an appointment at the doctor’s. These realities cannot be measured in pounds and pence.

When trust between the government and the people breaks down, as on this issue, it undermines the whole political system. Far from a “pseudoscientific” bid to limit immigration, we need a serious attempt to acknowledge the views of the electorate and address them in a non-partisan way. According to David Attenborough (not known to be a pseudoscientist), “all of our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder—and ultimately impossible—to solve with ever-more people.” Perhaps he could be the ODC’s first chairman?

No: Without defining “overcrowded,” this is a meaningless debate. The reason that Malthus’s work is cited today is that he sets out a clear definition of overpopulation: an overcrowded nation is one that has more people than it can keep alive. This is a term that no one, pretty much anywhere, would apply to the UK today. Moreover, even though Britain’s total population is expected to grow quite a bit more in the years to 2050, there is nothing on the horizon to suggest that population will outstrip resources.

Predictions of doom have long bounced around. For example, in 1958, Professor John Dykstra, writing in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, concluded: “over-population is not a hypothetical possibility of the future; it is a pressing problem that demands immediate attention.” The nation in question? The Netherlands, whose population had more than doubled to 10.4m between 1899 and 1952. Steps must be taken, the professor wrote. However, since then, the Netherlands’ population has nearly doubled again, hitting 17.4m in 2020, and the nation appears none the worse for it.

Nor is there any evidence that densely populated areas are less happy. Islington and Kensington and Chelsea are the third and fourth most densely populated local authorities in Britain respectively, and it is difficult to characterise their residents as long-suffering.

To the extent that people face long queues for a school place or a visit to the GP, that is a greater reflection of government cuts than anything else. What may matter much more is the percentage of population able to contribute to economic output in general. Here, Britain faces a challenge. The percentage of those over age 65 will account for a quarter of the total by 2050, while the proportion over age 80 will nearly double, to just under 10 per cent. Given that the greatest concentration of healthcare spending occurs in the last 18 months of life, it is easy to see that competition for scarce resources will come not from the arrival of new immigrants, but from rising numbers of ageing Britons.

Yes: So you want a definition of “overpopulated.” Two facts immediately spring to mind. First, our ecological footprint is currently running at 301 per cent of our bio-capacity, meaning that by 1st May every year we have used up our share of natural resources for the whole 12 months. Second, we can ask what people feel—and nearly three quarters of Britons believe the UK is overcrowded and that the government should introduce policies to address the challenge.

You focus on the ratio of those of working age compared to those in retirement. But the maths is inexorable. To fix the dependency ratio (with young dependents included) at the levels of 2000-10, the population would have to reach 100m by 2060—a 50 per cent increase. That cannot be sensible. Already, the rate of population growth “crowds out” opportunities, with the consequent societal strains: young people forced into zero-hours contracts, members of minority communities locked into low pay, and the over 50s finding it increasingly difficult to get jobs even as we begin to raise the retirement age.

We have now built over about 20 per cent of the UK’s available land space and will develop another area the size of Bedfordshire by 2040. Let me turn your question round: when would you agree that the UK was becoming overcrowded? Only when the last blade of grass had been tarmacked over!

You focus on economic issues. But the challenges of too large a population are many: degraded agricultural land, impending water shortages, five out of six species in the UK in (sometimes terminal) decline, loss of open spaces, and last but not least a feeling among many of our fellow citizens that they have lost their country. That is why it is so important to examine, measure and report on these issues in a transparent, authoritative way. Not only will it help us plan better for the future, it will reassure people that their concerns are being addressed—so helping to restore trust in our system of government.

No: You are reaching into areas of public policy and environmental planning that have everything to do with income distribution and nothing to do with population size. First, let me say that I am very sympathetic to the argument that environmental strains threaten the continued existence of life on earth. However, even if total global population threatens the planet, its distribution is less important. The environmental damage that you describe is happening everywhere regardless of local population density. Indeed, some of the most high-profile damage is occurring in countries with far lower densities than Britain. These include Australia with its massive wildfires (nine people per sq/km) and Brazil with its disappearing forests (65 people per sq/km).

Moreover, global population is forecast to go into decline, beginning in 2100, due to the collapse in fertility rates. Indeed, a new study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation suggests the decline will begin in the third quarter of this century and be particularly acute among industrialised countries.

And let’s talk about Britain’s ecological capacity and biological footprint. According to the WWF, some of the highest footprints are found in areas that rely on cars, not densely populated cities. Indeed, the average St Albans resident has a transport footprint 55 per cent larger than that of a Londoner. Mercifully, local government in Britain is now undertaking projects aimed at sustainable development. I hope that you and others who share your views will happily pay higher tax to cover the costs of green local projects.

There is not a shred of credible evidence that blames rising population for zero-hours contracts, low pay for minorities or scarce work for older adults. If growing populations caused these things, they should surely have been endemic throughout the industrial age. Countries with more enlightened governments find ways to address such problems.

And finally, let’s examine the heart of the overpopulation thesis: that most Britons simply do not want to mix with too many non-natives. Yet for all the antipathy you cite, millions have shown they are perfectly happy to see immigrants as their customers, suppliers, workers and neighbours. Keeping them out as part of some pseudoscientific project would be a foolhardy endeavour.