Quarter of Britain's babies are born to foreign mothers

1 September Daily Mail

The Government has today revealed the top-ten most common nationalities of foreign-born women who gave birth in NHS hospitals in the last year.The new record level of births to foreign-born mothers is more than double the proportion of 20 years ago, with women originally from Poland topping the list, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Other nations represented in the top ten include Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Somalia.

A total of 184,000 children were born in these circumstances, with almost half of them in London, which has a foreign-born mother rate of 56.7 per cent, far above the national average of 25.5 per cent.According to official figures, the average hospital birth can cost £1,600, meaning the total cost to the NHS of these would have been at least £30million.

Some of the women will have been born abroad and settled in the UK but a number will have visited just to use the NHS.So called 'health tourism' as a whole is thought to cost taxpayers as much as £200million a year.Urgent treatment, such as maternity care, is provided regardless of residence status or ability to pay but hospitals must take reasonable measures to recover debts from overseas patients if they can trace them.

Some trusts are owed tens of millions by foreign patients and have been forced to write-off some of these debts.

It came as it was also announced that net migration to the UK is still at 216,000 a year, which is still double the Government's 100,000 target.This means that means hundreds of thousands more people every year are coming to the UK when compared to numbers who leave.Meanwhile the number of foreign-born mothers is rising consistently annually, with the figures now double what they were 30 years ago.Figures compiled by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that a 25.5 per cent of all children born in 2011 had foreign-born mothers, compared with 25.1 per cent the year before.

More than 20,000 were from Poland, followed by 18,000 from Pakistan, almost 15,000 from Indian and and more than 8,000 from Bangladesh. It is the highest proportion of births to non-UK born mothers since parents' country of origin was introduced in birth registration in 1969.

In Newham, east London, more than three quarters of new mums were born outside the UK but choose to give birth here.The ONS found that a slight rise of 0.1 per cent in the overall number of newborn children compared with 2010 was entirely due to foreign-born mothers.Women born in the UK had 1,957 fewer babies in 2011 compared with the previous year, in a reversal of rising numbers of births to UK-born women since 2002.

Meanwhile mothers born outside the UK had 2,702 more babies, in line with a trend since 1995 for the number of births to women who came to the UK from abroad to rise year-on-year.The ONS said: 'This is the highest proportion of births to mothers born outside the UK since the collection of parents' country of birth was introduced at birth registration in 1969.'This proportion has increased every year since 1990, when it was just under 12 per cent, with a marked rise over the last decade.

In 2001 the proportion of births to non-UK born mothers was 16.5 per cent.'It added: 'The slight fall in the number of births to UK born women is a reversal of the previous trend of rising numbers of births to UK women since 2002. In contrast, the number of births to women born outside the UK has risen every year since 1995.'Dr Martin Ruhs, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said the estimated figures were based on the International Passenger Survey (IPS) and margins of error meant they could be 35,000 higher or lower than stated.

So while net migration was put at 216,000 for last year, this was the central estimate for the figure which could range from 181,000 to 251,000, meaning that the apparent drop is not statistically significant.'There is a constant desire among policy makers in all parties, the press and other interest groups in having 'hard' facts and specific numbers about migration, but the reality is that sometimes these are simply not available,' Dr Ruhs said.

'The uncertainty around the official migration estimates means that the figures need to be used and interpreted with great care.'Long-term immigration fell slightly to 566,000 from 591,000, similar to the level it has been at since 2004, while emigration rose slightly from 339,000 to 350,000.Study was the most common reason for those coming to Britain, with figures showing 232,000 came last year, similar to the 238,000 in the year to December 2010.But the number of visas issued for the purpose of study, including student visitors, were down a fifth in the 12 months to June, the ONS figures showed.

There were 282,833 visas issued for study, a fall of 21 per cent compared with the previous 12 months.