Thaindian News

London, Dec 10 (ANI): Brit-Indian singer Cliff Richard and actress Joanna Lumley have been listed among the number of people living in Britain who were born abroad, a figure that has reportedly doubled to 6.9 million in the past 30 years.

The daily Mail quoted the ONS figures, given in an article on the country’s population by National Statistician Jil Matheson, as saying that the figure (6.9million) is over one in ten of everyone in the country.

Although it includes many people born abroad to British parents, the great majority of those included are people without British connections who have come to this country as immigrants, the paper said.

The figures from the Office for National Statistics show that in 1981, six percent of the British population were foreign-born (3.4million people). By 2001, this had risen to 4.9 million and made up eight percent of the population.

In 2009, following the record high immigration of Labour’s years in power, the proportion of those born abroad had risen to 11 percent of the 62 million population.

The figures underline the impact of immigration over the past 30 years, and especially since Labour came to power in 1997.

The foreign-born population includes around 1.3 million people from the Asian sub-continent and a similar number from Africa. People born in Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand together total slightly under 900,000. (ANI)