PESSIMISTIC TALK OF BRITAIN’S PROSPECTS

Grey River Argus, 10 May 1948, Page 3

PESSIMISTIC TALK OF BRITAIN’S PROSPECTS

LONDON, May 4. Political and Economic Planning (P.E.P.) in a report on population policy, said: “Britain is faced with the danger of passing from demographic maturity into senility. There is no prospect or need for a population increase in Britain. Unless the birthrate is kept up there is some prospect of a slow decline. But within the limits of likely change the size of Britain’s population is not of great importance. What matter are the steady increase in the ranks of the elderly and old and the depletion of the younger and most adaptable working age groups. “Selective immigration from Europe is a useful secondary means of correcting an unhealthy balance of ages. It will be needed, in any event, to complement the moderate flow of British emigrants to the Dominions (which P.E.P. favours). But the disease of demographic senility cannot be averted without a somewhat higher birth-rate than between the wars” In the second half of the twentieth century P.E.P. expects that population in most of the white nations outside the “Iron Curtain” in Europe, and. in North America and the Dominions, will become stationary. In South America and in the Soviet Union and its associated nations it will continue to grow, though tending to become stationary. The backward regions of Asia will become increasingly crowded. EXPORTS INCREASING The president of the Board of Trade. Mr Harold Wilson, speaking at the British Industries Fair inaugural dinner, which was attended by representatives of 50 countries, promised that as British industrial recovery continued and supplies improved export delivery delays would grow shorter. Mr Wilson added that he knew that in one or two isolated cases the quality of British goods had fallen below the country’s high traditions, but these cases stood out by contrast with the very high quality of the whole range of British export products since the end of the war.