This Commons Library briefing paper is a short statistical portrait of the UK's Polish population. It covers the size, age structure, and geographic distribution of the Polish population, and includes statistics on Polish family structure and employment.
After nearly a decade of work on a programme to replace the UK's nuclear deterrent from the early 2030s, a decision on taking that programme forward will be made shortly. The Government will seek the approval of Parliament for this decision on 18 July 2016. But what are the arguments for and against doing so? How much will it cost? And are there any other alternatives? This paper updates and replaces all previous House of Commons Library briefing papers on this subject dating back to 2006. More notably it replaces previous versions of this paper published in October 2015, January 2016, March 2016 and June 2016. It is also part of a wider Library briefing series on nuclear weapons.
Elections to the Scottish Parliament took place on 5 May 2016. The Scottish National Party won the largest number of seats (63), but lost the majority they held in the preceding Parliament. The Conservative Party came second with 31 seats, their best performance at any Scottish Parliament elections. Turnout was 55.7%, an increase of 5.3% points from 2011.
The e-petition, 'Stop allowing immigrants into the UK', uploaded to the Petitions website on 25 August 2015, has attracted over 100,000 signatures and as a result been selected for debate by the Petitions Committee. The debate will be held on 19 October 2015 at 1630hrs in Westminster Hall.
This briefing paper analyses the results of the 2015 General Election. It includes the election results by country, region and party, as well as the full result and turnout for every UK constituency. This is the second edition of the briefing paper, which provides additional analysis and statistics. New chapters in this edition cover seats changing hands, the characteristics of voters for each party, the characteristics of candidates and MPs, the electorate and turnout, safe and marginal seats, by-elections during the last Parliament, polling day, and the marginality of constituencies. The full results are available for download in two CSV files. The election results shown in this Briefing Paper were provided by Returning Officers following the 2015 General Election.
David Cameron described the Government’s immigration policy objective as “good immigration, not mass immigration.” The Government wanted to attract the ‘brightest and best’ migrants who were deemed most beneficial to the UK. It also wanted to reduce overall net migration levels from the hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands by the end of the 2010 - 2015 parliament, by minimising opportunities for abuse and being more selective about the criteria for entry.
The by-election in Rochester and Strood on 20 November 2014 was the 21st since the 2010 General Election. UKIP took the seat from the Conservatives with a majority of 2,920, pushing the Conservatives into second place.
Elections to the European Parliament took place in 28 countries of the EU between 22 and 25 May 2014. In the United Kingdom, UKIP won 24 seats, Labour 20, the Conservatives 19, and the Green Party three. The Liberal Democrats won only one seat, down from 11 at the 2009 European election. The BNP lost the two seats they had won for the first time at the previous election.
This briefing compiles 2011 Census data for UK constituencies - including age, country of birth, ethnicity, car ownership and housing tenure. Highest and lowest constituencies, maps and access to demographic profiles of all parliamentary constituencies.
Romania and Bulgaria (the ‘A2’ states) joined the EU on 1 January 2007. Their EU accession treaty permitted other Member States to impose transitional restrictions on the free movement rights of Bulgarian and Romanian ‘workers’ for up to seven years after accession, in order to guard against disruption of their labour markets. All Member States must lift restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian workers by the end of 2013.