'One-third of Londoners born outside Britain'

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New London: Numbers of people emigrating from Jamaica, Guyana, Singapore and Hongkong have fallen

Nearly a third of the population of London were born outside Britain, an official survey showed.

The number of people in Greater London who have come from overseas has risen by more than 650,000 since Labour came to power in an unprecedented wave of migration, it found.

The breakdown said that foreign-born population of the capital has gone up from 1,630,000 to 2,288,000 since 1997.

Highest numbers of immigrants have come from Bangladesh, India, the countries of the former Soviet Union, Ghana, and Sri Lanka, it suggested.

But at the same time as large numbers of new residents have arrived from abroad, the British-born population of London has been declining.

The figures from the Government's Office for National Statistics show that numbers of the native-born in London have dropped by 155,000 in the past nine years, from 5,215,000 to 5,060,000.

The analysis provides fresh evidence that London is showing signs of the phenomenon known as 'white flight', in which middle class families are leaving the capital to escape high housing costs, poor schools, poor transport and high crime.

White flight is named after the white middle class exodus from American cities in the 1950s and 60s - but in the case of London the numbers leaving include successful black and ethnic minority families looking to move to suburbs and other regions of the country.

The new assessment of London's population follows a breakdown from the ONS earlier this year which showed that more than a third of its people are now non-white, and that total number of people from ethnic minority backgrounds in London has reached 2.5 million.

The pressure of migration into the booming jobs market of London is now thought likely to push the growth of the capital to record levels in coming decades. ONS predictions say that London, said to contain 7,348,000 people, is likely to increase in size to more than 8.8 million by 2029.

However independent critics say that since there is no accurate record of the real level of immigration and because a high proportion of migrants head for London, the actual population is higher than official figures show and is certain to pass 10 million in future.

The latest figures on Londoners born abroad are based on the Labour Force Survey, a regular ONS exercise which gathers information from 53,000 homes. Some 5,000 of these are in London.

As with almost all Government attempts to count population at the moment, its findings are open to doubt.

For example, it puts the number of Polish-born people in London at 70,000, a figure far lower than could be expected from other Government estimates that 600,000 people have come in from Eastern Europe over the past three years.

The survey said that 31.1 per cent of the population of London is made up of people born abroad.

The analysis shows that numbers coming into the capital is now lower than in the past from some traditional emigration countries.

In particular, numbers of people born in Ireland have collapsed as the growing Irish economy has turned the country into a magnet for immigrants rather than a source of migrants for other countries.

Numbers of those born in Jamaica, Guyana, Singapore and Hongkong have also fallen.

Figures published by the ONS in the summer showed that non-whites now make up 33.5 per cent of the population of London compared with 29 per cent in 2001.

 

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