Brexit matters

[najaB]

A recent discussion on the forum wasn't exactly conclusive that this would be a net contribution to the UK economy.

Only because some people refuse to acknowledge reality.

 

[RT4038]

Only because some people refuse to acknowledge reality.

Your reality, or theirs?

 

[najaB]

Your reality, or theirs?

Objective. Some people, despite being shown the official government statistics, refuse to acknowledge that EEA migrants contribute more to the UK economy than native-born UK citizens.

Unfortunately, some of them have job titles starting with "Secretary of State for..."

 

[RT4038]

Objective. Some people, despite being shown the official government statistics, refuse to acknowledge that EEA migrants contribute more to the UK economy than native-born UK citizens.

Unfortunately, some of them have job titles starting with "Secretary of State for..."

Do the official Government statistics compare apples with apples? - I rather think not, which is why I say it is inconclusive. Post #5809 tells us not to turn this into a general Brexit discussion, so no more on the subject here.

 

[najaB]

Do the official Government statistics compare apples with apples?

Yes.

I rather think not, which is why I say it is inconclusive. Post #5809 tells us not to turn this into a general Brexit discussion, so no more on the subject here.

The Government and Tory apologists ignoring their own statistics for ideological reasons is a big part of why the Tory party (and the country!) is in the state that it's in, so I think it's quite relevant.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Objective. Some people, despite being shown the official government statistics, refuse to acknowledge that EEA migrants contribute more to the UK economy than native-born UK citizens.

Do they refuse to acknowledge that? Off the top of my head, I can't recall any Government minister explicitly denying that, in terms of tax-take/boost to GDP/etc., EEA migrants contribute more to the economy than native-born UK citizens. As I understood it, the issue is that economic benefit is - in the minds of many people - outweighed by the other problems caused by too much EEA migration (pressure on housing and services, issues of community cohesion, inability for the Government to determine who we would like to accept, high EU migration having a knock-on effect making it harder to accommodate people from outside the EU, etc. etc.)

 

[RT4038]

The point is not that EEA migrants contribute more to the economy than native born UK citizens on a per capita basis (of course they will, because there are proportionally many fewer economically inactive EEA migrants compared to native born UK citizens [pensioners, children, disabled etc]), but whether EEA migrants contribute more than they 'cost', not only in direct tax versus benefits (of all kinds), but also in the economic value of pressure on services and society as a whole. It is that which is not covered/measured in official Government statistics which means that apples are not being compared to apples, and why I believe the arguments are inconclusive until such a study (based on actual rather than indicative/notional numbers) is done. And I realise that such a study can easily be biased towards the views of whoever commissions it!

 

[najaB]

Do they refuse to acknowledge that?

Look back about three or four pages in this thread.

 

[dosxuk]

The point is not that EEA migrants contribute more to the economy than native born UK citizens on a per capita basis (of course they will, because there are proportionally many fewer economically inactive EEA migrants compared to native born UK citizens [pensioners, children, disabled etc]), but whether EEA migrants contribute more than they 'cost', not only in direct tax versus benefits (of all kinds), but also in the economic value of pressure on services and society as a whole. It is that which is not covered/measured in official Government statistics which means that apples are not being compared to apples, and why I believe the arguments are inconclusive until such a study (based on actual rather than indicative/notional numbers) is done. And I realise that such a study can easily be biased towards the views of whoever commissions it!

It sounds like your issue is the official statistics compare apples and apples, but you want them to compare apples and cider.

There is no recognised objective method of measuring a person's overall value to a country - and as you say, it would depend entirely on the view of anyone who was to perform such a study as to how to weight the different ways someone can add or remove value - to the point that any individual study would be incomparable to any other independent study.

Personally I strongly believe the issues you raise are not the fault of the EU or the migrants, but rather a failure of successive governments to allow and encourage the levels of immigration seen, while also not investing in the basic services and infrastructure that are required to support that population level and growth.

 

[YorkshireBear]

It sounds like your issue is the official statistics compare apples and apples, but you want them to compare apples and cider.

There is no recognised objective method of measuring a person's overall value to a country - and as you say, it would depend entirely on the view of anyone who was to perform such a study as to how to weight the different ways someone can add or remove value - to the point that any individual study would be incomparable to any other independent study.

Personally I strongly believe the issues you raise are not the fault of the EU or the migrants, but rather a failure of successive governments to allow and encourage the levels of immigration seen, while also not investing in the basic services and infrastructure that are required to support that population level and growth.

This is the crux of it.

Government's were happy to let them in when we needed cheap labour to prop up the economy but we're quite happy to throw them under the bus as an excuse, or for votes and personal political gain!

We are out of the EU and yet loads of immigrants are still coming, so it shows you exactly whose fault it is!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Personally I strongly believe the issues you raise are not the fault of the EU or the migrants, but rather a failure of successive governments to allow and encourage the levels of immigration seen, while also not investing in the basic services and infrastructure that are required to support that population level and growth.

I think there's some truth in that, but there is also a problem that it's clear the numbers of people who want to come and live in the UK far exceeds any reasonable rate at which any Government could build infrastructure or at which we'd realistically be able to integrate people into communities and maintain a cohesive society etc. - even if the Government had been completely on the ball in that regard. So the Government doesn't really have any choice but to restrict immigration - which inevitably means that a lot of people who want to come and live here won't be able to. But as soon as the Government tries to do that, lots of people start shouting that it's inhumane/xenophobic/whatever, so the Government can't really win whatever it does.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Nov 2023 ==

Government's were happy to let them in when we needed cheap labour to prop up the economy but we're quite happy to throw them under the bus as an excuse, or for votes and personal political gain!

Not really. The Government isn't throwing anyone under the bus who's already here (with the notable exception of the Windrush scandal). Brexit has just meant that lots of people who might have wanted to come here can no longer do so.

We are out of the EU and yet loads of immigrants are still coming, so it shows you exactly whose fault it is!

As far as I'm aware, no-one ever claimed that once we'd left the EU, all immigration would stop. Brexit has largely sorted the problem of high EU immigration, but has nothing to do with high non-EU immigration, which is a very separate issue. As for whose fault it is... if a certain Mr. Putin hadn't invaded Ukraine, and a certain Mr. Xi hadn't decided to unilaterally renege on agreements with the UK on Hong Kong, then we wouldn't have had several hundred thousand immigrants/refugees from those countries, which accounts for quite a lot of the very high immigration figures for 2022.

 

[Peterthegreat]

I think there's some truth in that, but there is also a problem that it's clear the numbers of people who want to come and live in the UK far exceeds any reasonable rate at which any Government could build infrastructure or at which we'd realistically be able to integrate people into communities and maintain a cohesive society etc. - even if the Government had been completely on the ball in that regard. So the Government doesn't really have any choice but to restrict immigration - which inevitably means that a lot of people who want to come and live here won't be able to. But as soon as the Government tries to do that, lots of people start shouting that it's inhumane/xenophobic/whatever, so the Government can't really win whatever it does.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Nov 2023 ==



Not really. The Government isn't throwing anyone under the bus who's already here (with the notable exception of the Windrush scandal). Brexit has just meant that lots of people who might have wanted to come here can no longer do so.



As far as I'm aware, no-one ever claimed that once we'd left the EU, all immigration would stop. Brexit has largely sorted the problem of high EU immigration, but has nothing to do with high non-EU immigration, which is a very separate issue. As for whose fault it is... if a certain Mr. Putin hadn't invaded Ukraine, and a certain Mr. Xi hadn't decided to unilaterally renege on agreements with the UK on Hong Kong, then we wouldn't have had several hundred thousand immigrants/refugees from those countries, which accounts for quite a lot of the very high immigration figures for 2022.

According to the ONS in the year ending June 2023 there were 89,000 immigrants from China and 35,000 from the Ukraine. This compares with 253,000 from India, 141,000 from Nigeria and 55,000 from Pakistan. So there are not several hundred thousand refugees from China and Ukraine. In fact those two countries only make up 10%!

 

[DynamicSpirit]

According to the ONS in the year ending 2023 there were 89,000 immigrants from China and 35,000 from the Ukraine. This compares with 253,000 from India, 141,000 from Nigeria and 55,000 from Pakistan. So there are not several hundred thousand refugees from China and Ukraine. In fact those two countries only make up 10%!

Can you be more specific about what those statistics refer to? We've certainly taken in far more than 35K from Ukraine. This BBC article claims that by May 2022 there were 60K Ukrainian refugees in the UK, and 115K who had been given visas; that was at a time when the exodus from Ukraine was still ongoing, so the total number today is going to be higher. My guess is that maybe you're looking only at numbers arriving during 2023 - which is long after the peak of arrivals from both Ukraine and Hong Kong.

 

[Peterthegreat]

Can you be more specific about what those statistics refer to? We've certainly taken in far more than 35K from Ukraine. This BBC article claims that by May 2022 there were 60K Ukrainian refugees in the UK, and 115K who had been given visas; that was at a time when the exodus from Ukraine was still ongoing, so the total number today is going to be higher. My guess is that maybe you're looking only at numbers arriving during 2023 - which is long after the peak of arrivals from both Ukraine and Hong Kong.

The year ending June 2023. I have edited my earlier post.

 

[najaB]

So the Government doesn't really have any choice but to restrict immigration - which inevitably means that a lot of people who want to come and live here won't be able to. But as soon as the Government tries to do that, lots of people start shouting that it's inhumane/xenophobic/whatever, so the Government can't really win whatever it does.

Of course the Government can and should restrict migration. Anyone who suggests otherwise really shouldn't be sitting at the grown-up's table.

What we despair about is that the current government (and previous ones to a lesser extent) are using their self-created small boats 'crisis' as an excuse to engage in literally inhumane and xenophobic actions. There is no way that a scheme which would cost in excess of £140M to send 200 asylum seekers to Rwanda, spending £6M a week on hotels to house asylum seekers rather than processing their applications, or spending anything up to £1B on accommodation barges can be described as a serious attempt to manage immigration in a sensible or effective manner.

Meanwhile, net immigration has hit an all-time high.

 

[RT4038]

It sounds like your issue is the official statistics compare apples and apples, but you want them to compare apples and cider.

Comparing EEA migrants with all of the UK population is a nonsense. It is not apples with apples.

There is no recognised objective method of measuring a person's overall value to a country - and as you say, it would depend entirely on the view of anyone who was to perform such a study as to how to weight the different ways someone can add or remove value - to the point that any individual study would be incomparable to any other independent study.

Quite, hence why comparing hypothetical cases and part values is inconclusive.

Personally I strongly believe the issues you raise are not the fault of the EU or the migrants, but rather a failure of successive governments to allow and encourage the levels of immigration seen, while also not investing in the basic services and infrastructure that are required to support that population level and growth.

I am not sure how much Government has 'encouraged' unlimited quantities of FoM immigration? It came with EU membership I believe.

This is the crux of it.

Government's were happy to let them in when we needed cheap labour to prop up the economy but we're quite happy to throw them under the bus as an excuse, or for votes and personal political gain!

We are out of the EU and yet loads of immigrants are still coming, so it shows you exactly whose fault it is!

But the 'Government' is pandering to the people, enjoying a too higher standard of living by allowing [as much as FoM was a choice] cheap labour to prop up the economy whilst having low tax rates so not investing in basic services and infrastructure., and not allowing the countryside to be excessively built on. Government does that in order to get elected. So maybe the fault lies amongst the electorate, who want their cake and to eat it......

 

[najaB]

I am not sure how much Government has 'encouraged' unlimited quantities of FoM immigration? It came with EU membership I believe.

Failing to invest in education and training for one thing, leading to a skills shortage. Guess who came here to fill the jobs that UK native-born people weren't able to.

 

[Richard Scott]

Failing to invest in education and training for one thing, leading to a skills shortage. Guess who came here to fill the jobs that UK native-born people weren't able to.

Working in education the issue is not often lack of investment but lack of will to do anything. Too many people pandering to non-issues so meaning a certain proportion of people waste their education. Too many low expectations placed on learners but high expectations placed on educators.

 

[RT4038]

Failing to invest in education and training for one thing, leading to a skills shortage. Guess who came here to fill the jobs that UK native-born people weren't able to.

For skilled jobs I can understand, but working in warehouses and shops etc?

 

[najaB]

So, negotiations on the Canada trade deal have broken down, leaving our trade with Canada on worse terms than it would have been if we were still in the EU.

Negotiations between the UK and Canada on a post-Brexit trade deal have broken down after nearly two years, following a row over beef and cheese.

Canada has been pushing for the UK to relax a ban on hormone-treated beef, which its producers say in effect shuts them out of the British market.

The UK have concerns about 245% import taxes Canada put at the start of the year on British cheese.

The pause in talks mean British car firms could also face higher tariffs.

It will also mean the UK's trading terms with Canada will now be worse than when it was part of the EU's deal with the country

UK halts trade negotiations with Canada over hormones in beef ban

Talks aimed at extending an EU-era deal broke down over Britain's ban on hormone-treated meat.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Gloster]

So, negotiations on the Canada trade deal have have broken down, leaving our trade with Canada on worse terms than they would have been if we were still in the EU.

UK halts trade negotiations with Canada over hormones in beef ban

Talks aimed at extending an EU-era deal broke down over Britain's ban on hormone-treated meat.

www.bbc.co.uk

And there is more (not all today, but recent):

Potential medicine shortages as the EU creates a stockpile and guess who will be further down the queue.

Increases in the price of fruit and veg expected due to increased border checks. (Don’t want these boat-carrots, do we?)

Up to 14-hour waits at Dover a ‘reasonable worst case‘ scenario from October.

Brexiteers going bonkers because Sunak has agreed to screen new laws to ensure that they won’t create new trade barriers.

No exemption for the ‘90 in 180 days’ rule for British expats in France. (My god, how are we going to survive the winter if we can’t stay in St Trop?)

And, worst of all...a possible shortage of flowers for Valentines Day. (So you will have to give her a native British plant (which it isn’t) such as a giant hogweed.)

Drawn from The London Economic and elsewhere.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

So, negotiations on the Canada trade deal have broken down, leaving our trade with Canada on worse terms than it would have been if we were still in the EU.

UK halts trade negotiations with Canada over hormones in beef ban

Talks aimed at extending an EU-era deal broke down over Britain's ban on hormone-treated meat.

www.bbc.co.uk

Never fear im sure Badenock will come up with trade deal with country nobody's heard off and tell us how good BREXIT is. Ultimately though i can never forgive Labour for not supporting Mays deal as the least bad way forward.

 

[nanstallon]

Brexit - the gift that keeps on taking. Thank you so much, Farage, and the so easily conned English voter.

 

[alex397]

Brexit - the gift that keeps on taking. Thank you so much, Farage, and the so easily conned English voter.

Indeed.
It’s one thing I’ll never forgive this country for.

 

[najaB]

It’s one thing I’ll never forgive this country for.

Don't blame the country - most people did not vote for Brexit.

 

[Enthusiast]

Don't blame the country - most people did not vote for Brexit.

And even more did not vote to remain.

 

[najaB]

And even more did not vote to remain.

Indeed. But that was the status quo, so only a minority indicated a desire for change.

 

[Richard Scott]

Ultimately though i can never forgive Labour for not supporting Mays deal as the least bad way forward.

I have to agree with you there. Labour are equally as much to blame for current problems, conveniently forgotten by many.

 

[Tester]

Ultimately though i can never forgive Labour for not supporting Mays deal as the least bad way forward.

But that's with the benefit of hindsight.

It is now clear that that would have been preferable, but it was not obvious at the time what would evolve.

 

[najaB]

I have to agree with you there. Labour are equally as much to blame for current problems, conveniently forgotten by many.

While they share blame, it's a bit unfair to say that they're equally to blame.

By way of an analogy: the person who opened the door has isn't equally responsible for the killings as the serial murderer they let in.