Hull sees foreign population treble in 10 years

THE number of foreign-born people living in Hull has almost trebled in a single decade, the first major local breakdown of 21st-century immigration has revealed.
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The study published this morning by academics at Oxford University concludes the number of people living in the city rose from 7,300 to nearly 22,000 in the years between 2001 and 2011.

The 195 per cent increase is tempered by the fact Hull began from a relatively low base of foreign-born citizens, and is now at a level more in line with the rest of the region – representing 8.5 per cent of the city’s total population.

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Doncaster, Wakefield, Barnsley, North Lincolnshire, Selby and Rotherham also saw their foreign-born populations more than double over the 10-year period, although all started from similarly low bases.

In most areas a significant portion of the increase came from an influx of Eastern European workers following the accession of the A8 countries – Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – in 2004.

Hull Council said no one was available to comment. But Labour MPs representing the city said they had concerns about the scale of immigration over the past decade, while stressing the significant benefits to the region.

Karl Turner, the MP for Hull East and an Opposition whip, echoed recent comments from his party leader Ed Miliband and Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper that Labour made mistakes on immigration.

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“Despite migrant population across the Yorkshire region being below the national average, I still think that we need to slow these levels down,” Mr Turner said. “We got it wrong in government, and we should have imposed transitional controls on countries joining the EU.

“We need to put checks on people coming to the UK to do low-skilled work when we have enough UK residents to fill these job vacancies.

“However, this has not always been the case, and we should not forget the UK economy has benefited from generations of migrants coming to the UK. Many migrants did jobs that UK residents did not want to do, and much of our NHS today is kept afloat by foreign doctors and nurses.”

Hull North MP Diana Johnson, who is part of Labour’s Shadow Home Office team, said: “I’m concerned about migration being used to undercut low-paid local workers, and that over the past few years under the coalition Hull’s public services have been denied the resources to cope with change.

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“However, Hull has gained economically and culturally from having overseas students at the city’s university.”

In Doncaster, which saw the second-largest proportional increase, newly-elected Mayor Ros Jones stressed the town’s overseas population still remains “relatively small”.

“As the figures in this report show, the migrant population figure for Yorkshire is nine per cent,” she said. “At 8.3 per cent, Doncaster has a relatively small migrant population which is below the regional average.

“This is largely due to an influx of people from Poland and other Eastern European states, due to these countries’ accession to the European Union.”

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By far the largest total increases were in Leeds and Bradford, which now have very similarly-sized overseas-born populations, each just below 90,000 people. Indeed, more than half of the region’s entire non-UK born population is living in West Yorkshire.

Dr Carlos Vargas-Silva, the senior researcher leading the research project at Oxford University, said: “These data paint a picture of a very varied region, with some areas like Bradford where nearly one in five people was born abroad, and other areas like Barnsley, where fewer than one in 20 were.

“The increase has been particularly marked in some areas. Hull’s non-UK born population has nearly tripled – from a comparatively low starting point – and has seen a notable increase in its Polish population.”

The North Yorkshire districts of Ryedale and Craven host the smallest number of non-UK born residents, with fewer than 2,500 in each.

Barnsley remains the area with the lowest proportion of residents born overseas - just 3.4 per cent of the town’s total population.