Julian Brazier says it is all to do with immigration

According to a pamphlet published today by Cornerstone Group member, Julian Brazier MP, the housing crisis, water shortage, congestion and publi cservice overstretch are all linked to the problems of immigration in the UK. In his essay he says:

"Overcrowding is a key cause of many of the factors which are destroying quality of life: mortgage slavery, overdevelopment, congested roads, water shortages, flooding and overstretched public services. We should do everything we can sensibly — and fairly — to reduce the level of immigration to well below the level of emigration.

The first and easiest step in this direction would be to return to a much smaller number of work permits (issued to non-EU citizens), as occurred under all previous governments. We should also restrict them, as was always the case before, to highly skilled people."

Personally, I think that drawing a conclusion between those things and a rising immigration is a little spurious. I'm not saying it is necessarily wrong in some cases, however (and I admit I am yet to read the fall pamphlet but I will later on) the argument seems to me to be finding cause and effect through correlation. One could equally find such casue and effects between wildly different things in a similar way.

There is certainly an immigration problem in this country. However, fro a purely economic point of view, many of those entering the country are here working and are paying tax. There is nothing wrong with that in my mind. Reversing the flow of immigration - which is essentially what Brazier is arguing for over time, may not actually fix the problems though. Consumption is, after all, a funny thing, and just because you reduce the number of people it doesn't therefore mean that consumption will reduce also.

For example, Brazier's argument is that the housing market is being influenced by the rise in immigration. If we assume that to be true, then the implication is that a reduction in immigration will end the shortage of housing. However, will it really do that? Just because there are more houses we may find there are still more than enough people to fill them. Simply reducing head count won't by necessity reduce shortage, it may just shift the "have-nots" into the "haves" and create a new group of "have-nots" instead.

Update: I've now read the pamphlet. It makes some interesting points, some of which I agree with, some of which I don't.