I think you are right on the symptoms, and some of the causes, but let me add some from the other side, as I think left and right both make good points and you have to be intellectually honest if you want to move forward.
There are some multinationals who escape taxation, but even if that were perfectly addressed it wouldn't solve the UK's issues. Tax receipts are already close to 40% of GDP, these are record highs, frankly there are few countries where going over 40% is both possible or sustainable. (The US is at 25% for reference).
House prices are high because for 15 years mortgages were basically at 0% interest. This didn't actually make housing more affordable through cheap mortgages, if just inflated house prices. The endless schemes to help young people buy property just makes this worse, as the schemes are just built into the price.
Lastly, and this is usually hard to hear for people of your persuasion, you just can't add 500k-1m NET people to a country and expect housing to be just as available, and the health service to not be under massive strain. It's a physical impossibility. YES, I know many immigrants work in the NHS. That is not a valid rebuke to the problem. 1m net immigrants last year is 1m more people who need health services. The NHS has received massively more funding since covid and just can't cope.
I'm not against migration, but the sheer numbers need to be talked about. You can't keep a sustainable country at these levels.
Finally, the UK has relied on financial and advisory services for decades as the core of its economy. This seems to be working less and less, tech is taking over. the 80-90s were about finance, since then it's been about tech. Slowly the country is falling behind.
This is a chronic issue in almost all of europe, but at least there there is high end manufacturing, and eastern europe has tonnes of catching up to do which grows the economy.
> * Net migration was unusually high in 2022, as several factors came together at the same time, including the war in Ukraine"[1]. *
Even so, the net migration numbers were nowhere close to 1 million. From the same source as above,
> * With this caveat in mind, estimates from the Office of National Statistics suggest that total net migration was 504,000 in the year ending June 2022. *
You suggested that the UK adds 500k-1m migrants every year, but the actual number seems to be pretty much at the bottom of that range. The number of students coming to the UK has also increased significantly (it does contribute to increase in net migration stats).
The ONS still predicts (with a considerable amount of uncertainty I'll admit) that the net migration numbers will fall significantly in the next 5 or so years.
I don’t think it matters really whether it’s 500k or 1m, if you have a massive housing shortage and a failing health service.
That’s still almost 1% addition to the population every year.
Even if that means 100k families, you still need an extra 100k houses or flats ideally per year. That is impossible, even with super efficient planning laws.
I found the same link as the other reply, and I notice the UK's net migration is broadly in line with other wealthier European countries and the USA.
You absolutely can have this level of migration, but you need to build the infrastructure to support it (homes, schools, hospitals etc).
Relevant statistics on number of dwellings are here [1], and they seem to fit the population increase, but I don't have time to find similar statistics on school places, hospitals etc.
It was a typical blame-the-immigrants comment with no evidence.
I don't mind what arguments people make when they provide some evidence to support them, but the commenter wrote "physical impossibility" when it took me 2 minutes to find statistics to the contrary for their first point.
There are some multinationals who escape taxation, but even if that were perfectly addressed it wouldn't solve the UK's issues. Tax receipts are already close to 40% of GDP, these are record highs, frankly there are few countries where going over 40% is both possible or sustainable. (The US is at 25% for reference).
House prices are high because for 15 years mortgages were basically at 0% interest. This didn't actually make housing more affordable through cheap mortgages, if just inflated house prices. The endless schemes to help young people buy property just makes this worse, as the schemes are just built into the price.
Lastly, and this is usually hard to hear for people of your persuasion, you just can't add 500k-1m NET people to a country and expect housing to be just as available, and the health service to not be under massive strain. It's a physical impossibility. YES, I know many immigrants work in the NHS. That is not a valid rebuke to the problem. 1m net immigrants last year is 1m more people who need health services. The NHS has received massively more funding since covid and just can't cope. I'm not against migration, but the sheer numbers need to be talked about. You can't keep a sustainable country at these levels.
Finally, the UK has relied on financial and advisory services for decades as the core of its economy. This seems to be working less and less, tech is taking over. the 80-90s were about finance, since then it's been about tech. Slowly the country is falling behind.
This is a chronic issue in almost all of europe, but at least there there is high end manufacturing, and eastern europe has tonnes of catching up to do which grows the economy.