BABY BOOM TAKES UK POPULATION TO 61MILLION; Highest birth rate since 1962 as migration falls.

Byline: Jack Doyle 

A BABY boom has pushed Britain's population past the 61million mark for the first time.

There were 791,000 children born in the UK last year - the highest for a generation.

That drove the population up by 400,000, the biggest rise since 1962.

The Office for National Statistics said there are now 61.4million people living in Britain. That's a rise of two million since 2001.

Outside

For first time in nearly a decade, birth and death rates overtook immigration as the biggest factor affecting population growth.

Tens of thousands of eastern Europeans headed home as the recession bit.

But half of all births were to women born outside the UK.

ONS statistician Roma Chappell highlighted the significance of the shift.

She said: "You have to go all the way back to 1993 to find a time when the fertility rate went higher.

"For the first time in a decade, natural change exceeded net migration as the main driver of population change.

"Prior to 1998, natural change was higher than net migration. This isn't a new phenomenon for the UK.

"If you go back, it was common for natural change to exceed net migration."

The figures confirmed the growth in the ageing population as the number of people over 85 hit a record high.

There are now 1.3million, making up two per cent of the population. The shift in Eastern European migration rates was even more marked.

New arrivals were down more than a quarter from 109,000 to 79,000 in the year to December.

More Eastern European immigrants went home in the same period - up by more than half to 66,000.

And the number registering for work fell 42 per cent to 116,000.

Decline

ONS chief statistician Karen Dunnell said the increase in emigration was probably due to the economic downturn.

The surge in Eastern Europeans returning home and the decline in arrivals meant they added only 13,000 to the total population last year.

Borders and Immigration Minister Phil Woolas said: "The fall in net migration is further proof that migrants come to the UK for short periods of time, work, contribute to the economy and then return home."

The population is now growing by 0.7 per cent a year, more than double the rate in the 1990s and three times the level of the 1980s.

CAPTION(S):

MIGRATION: Woolas