Grey Britain: Do We Need to Have More Children? (Dr Paul Morland)
Radical with Amol Rajan
BBC
4.5 • 919 Ratings
🗓️ 17 July 2025
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson recently warned that Britain’s declining birth rate could have “worrying repercussions for society.”
Demographer Paul Morland agrees. He says the trend towards an older society with fewer young people risks serious social and economic consequences.
The author of 'No One Left' tells Amol that he would change the tax system to benefit parents, subsidise childcare and rethink the way we teach sex education in our schools.
They also discuss immigration and the impact that a growing population has on the climate.
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Amol Rajan is a presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He is also the host of University Challenge on BBC One. Before that, Amol was media editor at the BBC and editor at The Independent.
Radical with Amol Rajan is a Today Podcast. It was made by Lewis Vickers with Izzy Rowley. Digital production was by Gabriel Purcell-Davis. Technical production was by Dave O’Neill. The editor is Sam Bonham. The executive producer is Owenna Griffiths.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, this is Radical with Amal Rajan, conversations about the global trends changing the world today and radical ideas for the future. |
| 0:15.0 | In this episode, a conversation with Dr Paul Morland, demographer and author of several books about the nature |
| 0:23.3 | of population change and how it is the secret engine of history, books like no one left, |
| 0:29.1 | The Human Tide and Tomorrow's People. And what you're about to hear with Dr. Morland is, |
| 0:35.0 | I think I humbly submit, more because of him than because of me, |
| 0:38.9 | a riveting conversation about the really urgent challenges |
| 0:42.6 | in policy and politics that lots and lots of different countries are facing. |
| 0:46.9 | And yes, the radical ideas that he thinks we need right now |
| 0:50.2 | to reverse demographic decline |
| 0:52.9 | and for all of us to collectively win the future. |
| 1:09.6 | Dr Paul Mourland, how very, very nice to see you again. |
| 1:13.7 | Well, delighted to be back. |
| 1:15.0 | Why did you decide? |
| 1:15.8 | At what point, what were you doing in your life that made you think that actually maybe demography, |
| 1:20.8 | the study of population change, is a kind of avenue to understanding, |
| 1:25.7 | or is a kind of secret engine of history? |
| 1:28.5 | I think there are two reasons in my autobiography, where demography suddenly hit me as important. |
| 1:37.4 | The first is I was born in 1964 in Wembley, and I saw enormous demographic and ethnic change in Wembley in the course of my |
| 1:46.4 | childhood and my adolescence in a way that most people in the UK are only seeing now. So that was |
| 1:52.4 | extremely striking. What was going on? Why was it happening? What was the reason for the |
| 1:57.5 | movement of people, for the change of ethnicity, movements in, movements out, |
| 2:01.5 | and so on. So that was one thing. The second thing, which a bit later, was when I got married, |
... |
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