UK NEWS

A THIRD OF BABIES ARE IN ETHNIC FAMILIES

CONCERN: David Davis

Saturday August 30,2008

By Tom Whitehead, Home Affairs Correspondent

MORE than a third of new babies are foreign or from an ethnic minority in a sign of the changing face of Britain.

Just 64 per cent of new-borns in England and Wales were registered as “white British”.

The totals from the Office for National Statistics were buried in health figures on birth patterns between different ethnic groups in 2005. It is the first time such a picture could be drawn as ethnicity has only recently been recorded at birth.

If the trend continues it is likely to alter dramatically figures from the 2001 Census in which one in eight people said they were not white British.

It comes a week after separate statistics showed that births to foreign mothers have almost doubled since Labour came to power and are set to become the main cause of population growth.

Of the 649,371 babies born in England and Wales in 2005, 8.6 per cent were recorded

as Asian or Asian British – of Pakistani or Indian descent.

Five per cent were black or black British, such as Caribbean or African descent. Of the others, 3.5 per cent were registered as “mixed” ethnicity and 2.4 per cent were “other ethnic group”, such as Chinese.

Tory MP David Davies, a member of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, said many black people included in the figures “set an example of integration to other ethnicities”.

But he added: “The problem comes when large numbers are not willing to use the language, are abusing our system and are demanding that laws are changed to accommodate them.”