Mass immigration has not made UK more productive, admits Government’s top expert

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PIC BY GEOFF ROBINSON PHOTOGRAPHY 07976 880732. Picture dated April 17th shows farm workers from G’s Growers planting celery in a field near Ely,Cambridgeshire,on Friday morning. Yesterday the company chartered a flight of Romanian workers to work in the fields in the UK. Farm workers were seen planting celery in the fields today (Fri) near G’s Growers headquarters in Cambridgeshire after it chartered a flight of Romanian workers to the UK. The men and women were spotted working hard in the fields in Ely this morning, hours after a flight carrying 180 Romanian workers arrived at Stansted Airport in Essex last night. Up to six flights are believed to have been organised to bring Eastern European farm workers to Britain, to work alongside new UK recruits. It comes after farmers launched a campaign to recruit more British workers to help with vegetable and fruit picking, after travel restrictions due to the coronavirus made it harder to get enough pickers from Eastern Europe. See copy CATCHLINE Farm workers plant celery in Ely

MASS immigration has not made Britain more productive, the Government’s top expert admitted yesterday.

Migration Advisory Committee chairman Prof Brian Bell warned: “Having more immigrants makes the economy ­bigger — it doesn’t necessarily make us more productive.”

Mass immigration has not made Britain more productive, a government expert admitted

Prof Brian Bell said: ‘Inevitably if net migration is positive and we are adding to the size of the population that puts pressure on housing’

 His comments come ahead of official statistics due to be published on Thursday that will show record numbers of ­arrivals in the UK.

He said it was “unambiguously true” tens of thousands of foreign students was “enormously positive” and had an “economic benefit”, but warned of downsides.

He told the BBC: “Inevitably if net migration is positive and we are adding to the size of the population that puts pressure on housing.”

And he said the benefits of a large foreign workforce were more complex than ­seeing the national output measure Gross Domestic Product (GDP) go up.

He said: “The thing we should be interested in is GDP per person . . . the broad conclusion from the last 20 to 30 years is that it doesn’t make an enormous effect.

“Good or bad immigrants are just like us, just as productive or unproductive as we are.”

 The Migration Advisory Committee sets levels of visa for foreign workers in sectors that need help from overseas labour.

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