A salutary Western Isles lesson for one side of the immigration debate
The Western Isles is in desperate need of immigrants amid a depopulation crisis. Scotland should beware the same fate
If you want to understand why a falling population is a problem, there are few better places than the Western Isles. In the UK, the number of births has recently fallen below the number of deaths. In Scotland, there are about 0.73 births for every death. But in the Western Isles, that figure was just 0.47 last year.
According to a report by the local authority’s finance director, Debbie Bozkurt, “without positive net inward migration”, the situation will be “unsustainable”.
One consequence has been a rise in the number of people, mostly elderly, who are medically fit to leave NHS facilities, but are unable to do so because of a lack of social care. It’s hard to get the staff when the working-age population is shrinking and the number of over-65s is rising.
The reason why Scotland’s population has continued to grow despite the disparity between births and deaths is simple: new arrivals from the rest of the UK and other countries.
Immigration becoming ‘ever-more critical’
However, there has been a recent reduction in the level of immigration and, based on current projections, our population is set to start getting smaller.
Esther Roughsedge, the National Records of Scotland’s head of demographic statistics, said: “... the population would be falling if it wasn’t for migration. Migration has been keeping our population growing. If you have the same level of migration, over time, that wouldn’t be enough to compensate for the widening gap between births and deaths.”
Scotland’s fair work minister Tom Arthur said the situation “makes immigration ever-more critical in ensuring we have working-age people to fill skills gaps, sustain public services like our NHS, support communities and grow the economy”.
Adam Stachura, policy direction of charity Age Scotland, said today’s older people faced “considerable challenges getting the health and social care they need” and warned that “even more people in the future will struggle to access timely support” unless governments act.
In recent years, much of the focus has been on reducing immigration, as many politicians seek to placate the kind of people who put one national flag or the other on the lampposts of local streets in order to ‘send foreigners a message’.
However, when they get older and find themselves trapped in a hospital bed for the lack of care workers, they may, too late, find themselves regretting they were not more careful about what they wished for.
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