MAIL COMMENT: Facing the facts about immigration

Yet the Government, far from confronting this uncomfortable truth, sought to look elsewhere.

The number of Eastern Europeans, who have been coming into the UK at record rates, has fallen back to its lowest level since EU expansion in 2004, the Home Office said.

Helping or hurting the economy? Immigrants waiting for work in London

The inference was that Ministers, keen to reduce the enormous strain on public services, had finally got a grip on migration.

Except it reflects no such thing: rather, Eastern Europeans have stopped arriving in large numbers because our economy, battered by the credit crunch, is collapsing. The pound is weak and opportunities, particularly in construction, have dried up.

By focusing on Eastern European arrivals (still 40,000 in three months), Ministers were also seeking to bury the real news being released by Whitehall.

The nation's population now stands at almost 61million, up two million since
2001. And, even if the tide of new arrivals does begin to turn, the population will continue to rise, the figures show.

Why? Because established migrants are each, on average, having more children than British-born women. And, last year, they accounted for 23 per cent of all births (54 per cent of those in London).

The strain placed on schools and hospitals - totally unprepared for the influx of migrants since 1997, which by itself has added 1.2million to the population - will be enormous for years to come.

Which highlights the real folly of the Government's attempted focus on the fall in the number of arrivals from Poland and its neighbours.

Eight in ten Eastern European workers are aged 18 to 34, and only 10 per cent have dependents. Provided they return home, this transient population stands a good chance of making a positive overall contribution to Great Britain PLC, by working hard and paying taxes.

Immigrants from some non-EU countries have higher rates of unemployment, claim more in benefits, and have more children.

Looking for work: A van driver offers work to immigrants

Thus, by comparison, they will be a drain on public finances. By virtue of being granted citizenship or indefinite leave to remain, they are also here to stay.

This is Labour's true immigration legacy. The sooner they face these facts, the better.

Spin unravelled

Earlier this week, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, in the hunt for positive headlines, stage-managed a crack down on paedophiles who travel abroad, to coincide with Gary Glitter's scheduled return to the UK.

It promptly back-fired, spectacularly, when Glitter refused to board his flight home, and spent the following days traversing South-East Asia trying to find a country that would take him, before last night admitting defeat and boarding a plane for the UK. Can we suggest another motive for Miss Smith's headline-grabbing?

Her department learnt on Monday it had presided over the catastrophic loss of the personal data of almost 130,000 of Britain's worst criminals. Isn't that why Ms Smith wanted some positive spin of her own?

Testing times ahead?

Congratulations to all those celebrating yesterday's record GCSE results, in which more than one in five exams were given A* or As. But, while such achievement can only be applauded, employers have cause for concern.

Entries in languages and IT were down sharply, yet these are precisely the skills needed in a modern, global world. The Government - which stopped foreign language lessons being compulsory in 2004 - forgets that at its peril.