Welsh could become a minority in Wales as English set sights west

**Graham** · 06-05-2014, 09:08 PM

Welsh could become a minority in Wales as English set sights west

THE TELEGRAPH 5 JUNE 2014

Welsh people could become a minority in Wales in around 70 years if the number of people from England and other parts of Britain settling there continues at the current rate, a new analysis of official figures suggests.

People from elsewhere in the UK already account for almost 22 per cent of the population of Wales, with the vast majority of the new arrivals coming from England, figures published by the Office for National Statistics show.

It is more than eight times the equivalent figure for England, where only 2.7 per cent of the population is made up from people born in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile only round one in 10 people currently living in Scotland and one in 20 in Northern Ireland originally came from other parts of the UK.

And the total number of people from elsewhere in Britain living in Wales has increased by 17 per cent in the last 20 years. Of the new arrivals, 95 per cent are from England.

When overseas migrants are also included, the Welsh-born population of Wales slipped from 75 per cent to 72 per cent in the last decade.

It suggests that were the decline to continue at the same rate, Welsh-born residents could account for less than half the population by the mid-2080s.

The dramatically higher proportion of people from elsewhere in the UK settling in Wales is also reflected in findings on national identity from the 2011 census.

Despite a passionate Welsh national feeling, reflected in everything from sport to politics and language, Wales could be described as the most “British” part of the UK.

When people were asked in the census how they would describe their national identity, 83 per cent of those living in Scotland said they were "Scottish" – or a combination of "Scottish" and "British" or some other nationality – and 70 per cent of those south of the border said they were "English".

By contrast only 66 per cent of those living in Wales described themselves as "Welsh" in some form.

It suggests that national feeling in Scotland on the eve of the independence referendum is 25 per cent higher than national feeling in Wales.

Wales, by contrast, emerges as less nationalistic overall than England.

Significantly the number of Welsh people living in England is almost as high as the number of English people in Wales – 507,000 compared with 636,000 – but account for a much smaller overall proportion of the population of England.

Jonathan Edwards, the Plaid Cymru MP for Carmarthen East, said the beauty of the Welsh landscape was undoubtedly a lure and inward migration was something Wales should welcome - if it meant that the new arrivals included younger people as well as those retiring.

“Wales has a twin challenge, our young people tend to move away to other economic opportunities but then of course older people tend to move to Wales to retire,” he said.

“It is obviously a very beautiful part of the British Isles and one which is not that far away from the major conurbations of the Midlands and South of England.

“It is the quality of life, I think, that Wales provides, which is the attraction but the challenge for policymakers is how to you turn those natural advantages that we have in Wales, the landscape, the beauty of the environment, into economic advantages.”

The figures, published as part of an ONS project to collate comparative statistics for the four countries of the UK ahead of the Scottish referendum, also show marked social and economic differences between different parts of Britain.

They include population projections showing that England, already by far the most densely populated part of the UK, will experience growth at almost twice the rate of the rest of the country in the next 25 years.

The figures also show a dramatic economic imbalance between London and the South East of England and the rest of the UK, with productivity in the capital far outstripping the rest of the country.

Yet proportionally smaller amounts of taxpayers’ money are spent in England than elsewhere. Scots receive £1,623 per head more in public spending than their English counterparts. Meanwhile Northern Ireland has the highest public spending per head at the equivalent of £10,876 a year for each person.