British Population Sees Emigration Baby Boom

According to reports, Britain's fast rising population is now close to 62 million. This news came by way of an official count that was released this week. The number of people in the country went up by 394,000 to reach 61,792,00 by the middle of last year, according to the Office for National Statistics.

This increase of 0.6 percent means that the population has been rising steadily since the turn of the Millennium. A lot of this is due to emigration. The population is now going up at twice the rate of the 1990's and three times the speed of increases during the 1980's.

The latest leap in statistics has also been pushed by growing birthrates, according to the Office for National Statistics. It said that 45 percent of last year's population rise was brought about by emigration and 55 percent by natural increase, or a greater number of births than deaths.

The rising birthrate itself is thought to be a product of emigration. One in four births last year were to mothers who were themselves born outside the UK. The country's population rose by 176,000 as a result of emigration.

The Office for National Statistics believes that continuing high levels of emigration means that the population will hit 70 million in 2029. Ministers repeated this week their promise to slash the number of emigrants coming into the country.

Emigration Minister Damian Green said that they believe that emigration has been far too high in recent years. The new government will reduce net emigration back down to the levels of the 1990's, or to tens of thousands rather than hundreds of thousands.