State debt ‘to rise if Tory aims on migrants achieved’

A senior official at the Office for Budget Responsibility suggested that, over a 50-year period, restricting immigration on this scale could increase public sector net debt by as much as 20 per cent of GDP – the equivalent of about £300bn at today’s prices.

But the OBR’s chairman Robert Chote stressed that the body was not recommending any particular level of immigration and said that the actual outcome for the public finances over such a long time-scale could diverge from its
forecasts due to other factors, such as changes in Government policies on pensions, public spending or tax.

Mr Chote told the House of Commons Treasury Committee that the OBR believes immigration boosts national income because migrants are more likely than native Britons to be of working age and less likely to make use of benefits, pensions and healthcare – even after taking into account additional spending on schools, GP surgeries and hospitals to cater for incomers.

“Essentially speaking, inward migrants are more likely to be of working age than the population in general,” said Mr Chote. “They arrive after some other country has picked up the expense of educating them and in some cases – though not all cases – they leave the country again before you get to the point at which they are most expensive, in terms of pensions, healthcare and long-term care.

“In terms of the fiscal position, that is what drives the fact that higher net inward migration over this time horizon does tend to produce a more beneficial picture.”

Mr Cameron has repeatedly stated the Conservatives’ ambition to reduce net migration – 
the number of people coming
into the UK minus the number leaving each year – to the tens
of thousands. But the goal is not official Government policy because it is opposed by Liberal Democrats.