Prince, Davina and a baby revolution

The heir to the throne is one. The environment secretary, Hilary Benn, another. The television presenter Davina McCall a third. They are all among one of the UK's fastest-growing demographic groups - people born in this country whose mother or father was born overseas.

More than a quarter of babies born in Britain have at least one foreign-born parent, it emerged this week, up from just over a fifth in 2000. It is a striking statistic that in some quarters, predictably, provoked alarm. "Many people simply don't understand how this could have happened without anyone being consulted," Sir Andrew Green, chair of the rightwing anti-immigration group Migration Watch, wrote in the Daily Telegraph. "They are deeply concerned about the future."

Prince, Davina and a baby revolution

The row over statistics showing 25% of UK babies are born to foreign parents overlooks a well-established trend

Esther Addley Saturday August 25, 2007 The Guardian

The heir to the throne is one. The environment secretary, Hilary Benn, another. The television presenter Davina McCall a third. They are all among one of the UK's fastest-growing demographic groups - people born in this country whose mother or father was born overseas.

More than a quarter of babies born in Britain have at least one foreign-born parent, it emerged this week, up from just over a fifth in 2000. It is a striking statistic that in some quarters, predictably, provoked alarm. "Many people simply don't understand how this could have happened without anyone being consulted," Sir Andrew Green, chair of the rightwing anti-immigration group Migration Watch, wrote in the Daily Telegraph. "They are deeply concerned about the future."

Article continues But a closer look at the figure, which emerged with the publication of the latest population data by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), suggests a more nuanced picture of the changing national demographic than is implied by the image of pramfuls of immigrant infants, screaming for British benefits.

"This figure appears striking, but it needs to be put in context," said Richard Black, co-director of the Centre for Migration Research at the University of Sussex. The information does not tell us how many children non UK-born parents will have, or indeed whether they will stay in Britain. "What this shows is that there is a significant amount of immigration at the moment, and that immigrant mothers and fathers are still having children. That is all it shows."

To many, of course, the figure of one in four is no great surprise. On any given day in her job, says Jane Hawdon, a consultant neonatologist at University College Hospital in London, "you could work through an Atlas.

"It is impossible to give the full range of nationalities that I would encounter: Bengali, mothers from African countries, Turkish, Greek, eastern European of course, obviously English - and then there's the couple from Denmark who have come here for a weekend shopping and end up having their baby here."

London is, of course, a special case: 51% of the 116,019 live births in the capital in 2005 were to a mother who was born overseas; in the wider south-east the figure was 17%. The data reveals disparities across England and Wales: across the north-east the proportion is 8%, in Birmingham 36%, in Forest Heath in Suffolk, where just 756 live births were recorded in 2005, 47% were to foreign-born mothers.

Notably, the increase across the country is not accounted for only by the UK's most visible immigrant groups. The number of babies born with parental origins in subcontinental Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and the far east increased from 44,103 in 1995 to 62,404 a decade later, but while the tally from Bangladesh rose from 6,783 to 8,217, those with origins in the EU (excluding Ireland) almost doubled to 20,420; the figures for the rest of Europe, at 7,504, were more than three times that of a decade previously.

At the heart of the debate is an undeniable rise in immigration to the UK in recent years, though without up-to-date census data it is difficult to put an accurate number on the rise. "Of course, when you consider migrants, many are of the age where they are likely to become mothers or fathers," says Peter Goldblatt, co-director of the ONS centre for demography. "If you see an upturn in migration, as we have done in the past five to 10 years, this figure will be affected."

What these figures cannot tell us, crucially, is whether new parents who originated elsewhere will stay in Britain. A significant proportion of recent births, for example, is accounted for by migrants from new EU countries such as Poland. But according to Mr Black: "The obvious parallel to look at is the historical immigration from Italy or Spain or Portugal, and in all three cases the level of return has been quite substantial."

However, there is no question that society is changing, argues Rick Muir, a research fellow at the Institute of Public Policy Research. He suggests that instead of considering ourselves an old, long-established and relatively static place, Britons must recognise that global mobility has made the UK, like so many other places, a mutable, energetic, changeable place, like young Australia or frontier America.

The challenge for policymakers, he says, is to encourage Britons to a more accurate understanding of their country. "One thing the government has failed to do is to tell a story about the kind of society that we are today...which is one of multiple cultures and identities.

"Britain is now a place with diversity at its heart. With a few exceptions, it doesn't necessarily think of itself in that way. But that is what we are."