24th September 2026
Britain is approaching a rather remarkable demographic turning point. The population is still growing, but increasingly it is not because Britain is producing more people through births.
The latest population projections from the Office for National Statistics show that deaths are expected to overtake births from the middle of 2026 onwards. Yet the UK population is still projected to rise from 69.3 million in mid-2024 to around 71 million by 2034.
The reason is migration.
Over the ten years from 2024 to 2034, the ONS projects around 6.396 million births but 6.846 million deaths. That produces a natural reduction of about 450,000 people.
Over the same period, the ONS projects 7.278 million long-term immigrants and 5.096 million emigrants. The resulting net migration of about 2.2 million more than offsets the natural reduction and produces overall population growth of around 1.7 million.
That does not mean that every person entering Britain is an immigrant in the sense often used in political debate. Nor does it mean that population growth is simply the number of people arriving at the border.
It means something rather more basic.
Britain is becoming increasingly dependent on migration to maintain population growth because there are no longer enough births to do it naturally.
The birth rate has changed the equation
The decline in births has been developing for years.
Families are generally having fewer children and having them later. At the same time, the large generations born after the Second World War are moving through the older age groups.
That produces a demographic double effect. There are fewer young people coming through while the number of older people increases.
The ONS projects that the number of people of pensionable age will rise by 1.8 million between 2024 and 2034, from 12.4 million to 14.2 million.
That matters because population numbers alone do not tell us whether a country has enough people of working age to support its economy and public services.
A country can have a growing population while simultaneously becoming older.
That is essentially what Britain is now facing.
Scotland is already experiencing it
Scotland provides an even clearer illustration.
National Records of Scotland estimates that Scotland's population reached a record 5.545 million in mid-2025.
But in the year to June 2025 there were only 45,400 births compared with 61,600 deaths. Natural change was therefore minus 16,200.
Migration more than offset that decline. There were 107,800 people moving to Scotland and 89,900 moving out, producing net migration of 17,900.
So Scotland's population grew, albeit by only about 2,200 people over the year.
Without migration, the population would have fallen substantially.
This is not simply an immigration story. People move between Scotland and England, Wales and Northern Ireland as well as between Scotland and other countries.
But international migration is an increasingly important part of the calculation. In the year to mid-2025, Scotland had 57,600 people moving in from outside the UK and 48,300 moving out, giving net international migration of 9,300.
And then there is the Channel
This brings us back to the current debate over small boats.
The latest Home Office statistics show that 33,374 people arrived in the UK by small boat in the year to June 2026. That was down 23% from 43,309 in the previous year.
The reduction is significant, but it needs to be put into perspective.
The Home Office says that since the year ending December 2021 there have been between roughly 29,000 and 46,000 small-boat arrivals in every year. Weather has a substantial effect on the numbers, with warmer months generally providing more favourable crossing conditions.
In fact, the latest figures demonstrate how quickly the numbers can change. On 14 September 2026 there were 144 recorded arrivals and another 55 the following day. There were then no recorded arrivals for the next five days.
So a fall in annual numbers should not be confused with the problem disappearing.
There is also a useful comparison for readers in Caithness.
The 33,374 small-boat arrivals recorded in the year to June were a larger number than the entire population of Caithness.
That does not mean all of those people remain in Britain, nor does it mean all will ultimately be granted permission to stay. Most people arriving by small boat claim asylum and their eventual status depends on the outcome of the asylum process.
It does, however, illustrate the scale of the annual flow.
And small boats are only one part of Britain's immigration system. The vast majority of migration takes place through other routes, including work, study and family migration.
Falling numbers can still leave a growing bill
There is another reason to be cautious about concentrating too heavily on percentage changes.
It is rather like inflation. If inflation falls from 10% to 3%, prices have not fallen. They are still rising, just more slowly.
Similarly, if small-boat arrivals fall by 23%, that does not mean the costs associated with the previous years of arrivals have disappeared.
People still have to be accommodated while claims are processed. Asylum applications have to be assessed, appeals dealt with and, where claims are unsuccessful, removals carried out.
At the same time, the government is trying to reduce the use of asylum hotels and deal with the accumulated backlog.
That is a separate issue from the much larger question of legal migration and Britain's demographic needs.
The awkward question
This leaves Britain with a difficult demographic equation.
If fewer people come to Britain from abroad, population growth will slow and could eventually turn into population decline.
That might reduce pressure on housing and some public services. But it would also mean fewer working-age people available to fill jobs and fewer taxpayers supporting an increasingly elderly population.
If migration remains substantial, the population is likely to continue growing even though deaths exceed births.
That creates additional demand for housing, schools, healthcare, transport and infrastructure, while also bringing more workers, consumers and taxpayers into the economy.
Neither side of that equation can be understood simply by looking at one immigration number.
The more fundamental question is what sort of population Britain wants and needs in the decades ahead.
There is also a question that is rarely discussed with quite the same intensity as immigration: why are people having fewer children?
There are many possible explanations, including housing costs, the cost of raising children, changing attitudes, later family formation and the pressures of modern working life. None provides a complete answer.
But the demographic consequence is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
Britain is moving towards a situation in which more people are dying than are being born, while the population continues to grow because more people are arriving than leaving.
That is a profound change.
And for somewhere like Caithness, where an ageing population and a shortage of younger working-age people are already important economic and social issues, the national demographic debate is not some distant Westminster argument.
It is about who will live here, who will work here, who will pay the taxes and who will provide the services in the years ahead.