Thames Water was trying to find out why it needs to provide so much extra water and handle so much more waste water.
A consultancy has told them that there are more than a million extra people in the country without visas and work permits, with more than half a million in London. No wonder Thames Water needs more water supply , and more pipes for waste water.
The official statistics pick up the tens of thousands of illegal migrants who come here by small boat. They do not pick up the hundreds of thousands who come here on short stay visitor or student visas, only to stay on for longer, becoming permanent residents.
Our utility companies have to scramble to put in bigger pipes, more reservoirs, more grid and more generators to catch up. If just legal migrants came in they could plan ahead based on government policies on how many visas they will grant in future.
The government are ignoring illegal migrants and stretching public services as a result.
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The public sector often ignores the illegals, failing to send them home. It fails to build the extra affordable homes they need, driving up rents and forcing many young people to stay living with their parents, unable to rent or buy a home of their own.
It fails to hire the doctors and build the extra hospital wards and surgeries all the additional people need. Waiting lists get longer and medical staff are overstretched.
Many of these migrants who come legally as visitors get jobs. The UK government doesn’t bother to check they have return arrangements and does not record them leaving the country when their visa ends. It puts much more effort into checking up on UK citizens paying the BBC TV licence or following up speeding offences than it does over people staying here without a visa and using public services.
Some of these illegals are granted National Insurance numbers without proper visa checks, allowing them to get legal jobs. Others work in the shadow economy of illegal often low paid jobs, avoiding tax and difficult questions.
In 2007, the government says there were 76.8 million National Insurance numbers in issue, including people overseas and many who had died. We are not told how many that has now risen to. Each UK born person at 16 or each new legal citizen gets one number for life. That accounts for 55 million.
National Insurance numbers are granted to people from overseas to work here. Many may have obtained them legally, worked here for a bit and some have left.
Some others have either got them legally but stayed on after the work permit and contract ended, or got one without having a work permit to start with. Why isn’t anything done about this?
Successive governments have failed to stop the small boats crossing the channel.
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Some say it shows we need ID cards to catch illegals. On the evidence of the multiplication of NI numbers there would be plenty of forged ID cards on the market and doubtless the state would be dishing some ID cards out to people without valid visas.
Why can’t National Insurance numbers for overseas arrivals time expire with the work permit or contract? Employers are of course inclined to think if someone has an NI number they are legally entitled to work, though that may not be the case.
The public are rightly angry that the last government didn’t do enough to stop the small boats and this government so far has allowed more to come, cancelling the last government’s Rwanda scheme that offered a deterrent.
They are also rightly concerned that a far larger number of people have come legally and stayed on, often taking jobs and homes that were not envisaged when they gained a short stay visa.
Ministers need to tackle the National Insurance number abuses. They need to check people here for a short stay do leave. They need to check that the public sector is not employing people without work permits and visas.
It is no surprise we are short of everything from road space to healthcare, from electricity to homes when government figures so understate how many people live here.
We need more honest data on migration to allow better planning. Food companies have got on and provided for extra mouths.
The public sector needs to get its act together to let provision catch up with demand. Above all it needs to control numbers a lot better.