298,000 - a city the size of Nottingham or Coventry.

[Workingman]

That is how much the population of the UK grew last year due to migration alone.

The government is said to be "disappointed" that the figure is three times larger than its target. Labour, which started this whole thing off, claims the government's promises were "now in tatters".

Everyone is, of course, blaming the EU. None of them, not one, has apologised or offered any meaningful solution.

There are rules within the EU which could cut the flood to a trickle. Other countries use them to good effect, but not the UK. For some reason our politicians think it's a good idea to dilute the Anglo Saxon population and then pretend that it is not their doing.

[TheOstrich]

More grist to UKIP's mill. Which is why, of course, the media are doing such a number on them at present .....

[Workingman]

You can hear the gnashing of BBC news editors' teeth when they have to report these sorts of things as they damage their pro multi-culti agenda.

They also hurt the BBC's barely hidden agenda to try to trash UKIP at every turn. The more they try the stronger UKIP becomes.

[cromwell]

The Greens incidentally, want no immigration controls at all.

Does anyone know if asylum seekers are counted amongst the immigration figures or not?

No wonder there's a housing crisis. You couldn't build homes quick enough to house that lot.

[Workingman]

The figure is the population of Birmingham every three years.

Imagine having to put all the infrastructure and services in place to cope with that. Then, after three years, start again.....

[Suff]

WM you missed the point about there being more Non EU coming in than EU. So not only can't they use EU controls to block EU uncontrolled immigration; they can't even use the UK ones either.

Mind you, most of this is civil service driven by Blairite appointees. The Government does want to slow and control immigration. The civil service does not.

Regardless of how the Tories have failed here, there are only two parties who actually DO want to cut immigration. Tory and UKIP. All the rest?? Not worth voting for on this issue. The bigger point is how the press are doing a number on Cameron without the opposite position of no will to even tackle the issue as expressed by Labour and the Lib Dems.

Having said that, impact from the EU tends to be clustered too. Edinburgh, in 2 years, saw a 10% rise in population directly from Eastern EU immigration. Yes they work, yes they are good citizens. But they also consume public services and at a time when budgets were either cut or frozen, the stress on the system increased dramatically.