Migrant baby boom cost to NHS soars

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Record levels of immigration have pushed the cost up by £200 million in the past 10 years, according to analysis by the BBC.

And critics say the Department of Health has been "caught by surprise" by the rising birthrate, with some maternity wards forced to close their doors to expectant mothers.

Spending on maternity services has risen from £1 billion a year to £1.6 billion since Labour came to power.

And while a decade ago one baby in eight (12.8%) was delivered to a foreign-born mother, figures from the Office of National Statistics show that in 2006 there were 154,000 births to foreign-born women, making up about one in five (21.9%) of the total births in the UK.

The number of births to European-born mothers other than from the UK and Ireland increased by 87% between 2001 and 2006 to 27,000 - almost 4% of all UK births.

While the number of babies born to British mothers has fallen by 44,000 a year since the mid-nineties, the figure for babies born to foreign mothers has risen by 64,000, the BBC reported.

This 77% increase has pushed the overall birthrate to its highest level for 26 years.

The BBC said Heatherwood Hospital in Ascot closed its maternity unit last summer because of an unprecedented increase in the local birth rate. Midwives were moved to Wexham Park Hospital, closer to Slough, where an extra 150 babies were reportedly delivered to foreign-born mothers in the past year.

The knock-on effect was also experienced in nearby Reading, where the local maternity unit was forced to turn away expectant mothers because it was full. Peterborough has also seen an increase in births from Eastern Europeans - from three in 2000 to almost 200 in 2006, the BBC said.