The Development of Population Policy in Britain

Between 1960 and 1964, the projected population of the United Kingdom at the end of the century was revised from 64 to 75 million. Ecologists and others clamored for a policy aimed at controlling population growth before it placed intolerable burdens on resources and amenities. Skeptics retorted, however, that population policy was not a substitute for environmental policy, that average family size (about 2.5 children) was already relatively low, and that the problems were being exaggerated. Successive British governments showed little enthusiasm for the adoption of a positive policy on population growth. In the late 1960s public birth control services were extended, but these were regarded as a part of health care and not as an instrument of population policy. The only measures to limit numbers were those adopted in the 1960s to restrict immigration from the British West Indies and other parts of the Commonwealth. In 1971 the government set up a panel of experts to assess the available evidence on the significance of population trends. A much more purposeful attitude had been adopted toward the problems associated with uneven distribution of population. After the Second World War, plans for building construction and most other forms of development had to conform to physical planning policy. New towns were established to draw population from congested urban areas, and businessmen were given incentives to expand in those areas where unemployment tended to encourage migration to more prosperous parts of Great Britain.