According to the Independent newspaper, the population of the United Kingdom has reached almost 60 million. That's a rise of 9 million in just 50 years and of 1.7 million in the last ten years alone.

However, the truly remarkable figure is that one in 12 of that population were born abroad. The figures, from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) emphasise Britain's changing ethnic make-up, with 4.6 million people describing themselves as "non-white".

I find this remarkable, indeed; but not shocking. Indeed, I've always agreed with my late friend Julian Simon that immigration has been a great spur to economic progress almost everywhere. Immigrants tend to be young; to be outward looking and get-up-and-go. They bring in new ideas to challenge the old order; and ideas which mix with the established way of doing things to create completely new approaches.

So I don't fear immigration. But I'm worried by benefit tourism - that if a country's welfare state is too generous, people will flock there just to pick up the easy money. The solutions to that, though, are pretty obvious.