Home Secretary claims UK is terrorised by population projections

Home Secretary Alan Johnson has declared that the spectre of the UK population reaching 70 million is terrorising residents.

Johnson’s grim statement is sure to further the ongoing conflict between the Home Office and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) who has repeatedly claimed that the landmark will be reached in the next 20 years. Johnson said that the UK would cope with such an increase but repeated his predictions that such forecasts would not eventuate.

The Home Secretary’s latest statements were made ahead of his landmark public immigration debate with Conservative counterpart Chris Grayling and the Liberal Democrat spokesman for Home Affairs Chris Huhne. The announcement comes just one day after revelations that one in every ten people inside the UK was born overseas – a new record.

The ONS has claimed that the British population would hit 70 million by the year 2028. Similar predictions have also been made by independent statisticians based on current immigration trends. The government, however, has said that past trends will not continue and that growth would only be around one-third of that experienced in the past two decades.

Ahead of the debate, Mr Johnson has suggested that the predictions of the 70 million mark were sensible and pointed out that past forecasts had said that Britain would hit 76 million by 2001. Johnson argued that when he was a child in the 60’s the doomsayers said that it would be impossible to move to London by the 1980’s.