Baby boom is back

Increased immigration and older mothers have triggered a baby boom, as figures released yesterday put official birth rates at a 26-year high.

One in five babies is born to a woman from outside the UK - an increase of 10 per cent in just one year.

But there was also a large rise in births to women in their late 30s and 40s, as more continued to delay motherhood in favour of a career.

The figures, from the Government's Office for National Statistics, reveal the average number of children per woman in England and Wales has risen to 1.87 - the highest rate since 1980.

Last year there were 669,531 live births - the highest since 1993 and a rise of 3.7 per cent from 645,835 in 2005.

Of these, nearly 147,000 babies - 21.9 per cent - were born to immigrant families, compared to 13 per cent in 1996, the year before Tony Blair came to power.

A breakdown of the figures show the most dramatic increase can be seen in the birth rate for women from the European Union. Since 2000, the birth rate for EU immigrants has more than doubled.

In the last four years, about 600,000 Eastern European immigrants have arrived in the UK from the eight nations which joined the EU in 2004.

They include Poland, which joined the Union in 2004, and Romania and Bulgaria, which were added this year.

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There have also been big increases in the numbers of babies born to women from Pakistan, India, Africa and the Middle East.

Since Labour came to power in 1997, about 1.5million immigrants have moved to the UK, official figures suggest. There are no statisticsfor those who are here illegally.

Surprisingly, the average age of a new mother has increased by only one year to 29 in the last decade.

Officials say this is because migrant mothers tend to have children much younger than their British counterparts.

The figures also show that more women are delaying motherhood until their 30s and 40s when they are already on the career ladder.

The highest percentage rise in births is seen among women in their late thirties. There were 53.8 live births per 1,000 women aged 35-39 in 2006 - a 7 per cent increase on the previous year.

The number of live births to women aged 40 and over has almost doubled in the last decade, from 12,103 in 1996 to 23,703 in 2006.

The highest birth rates in any one area were recorded in Newham in East London, an area with a high migrant population and a non-white majority.

In Newham, each woman has an average of 2.56 children.

The lowest fertility rates were found in the North East, where each woman typically has 1.78 children.

Robert Whelan, of the Civitas think tank, said: "We have to bear in mind with immigration that we are not just looking at the numbers of adults coming into the country, but at large numbers of children being born.

"It will make a growing difference to the balance of the population because birth rates among the existing population are low.

"Immigrant groups have higher birth rates than the existing population.'