Scotland has a demography and population crisis and it is only going to get worse. With our falling birth rate we are reaching the stage where we have too few working age people available to look after an ever increasing older population. Already our health service is recording problems, the care service is heading for a workforce crisis and hospitality outlets and businesses are closing in our rural areas.

The simple fact is we need more working age people to refresh our population and if we fail to secure the people we require we will be in serious trouble.

In this Scotland is not alone. All over the world advanced democracies are facing the same range of problems. Many are now positively addressing their own particular issues with a range of interventions they hope might spare them the worst of the consequences.

France talks about more babies as ‘demographic rearmament’ whilst Italy has a Minister with responsibilities for the Birthrate. Such are the difficulties in South Korea that they have declared their demography a national emergency and committed $200 billion to addressing population decline. Even nations like Germany who opened their doors the widest to the recent waves of refugees face a fall in its working age population.

But we only need to look to Japan to see the worst consequences of population decline.

Japan is already seeing its population fall and its population could decrease by 25% by 2050. With population decline on this scale over the next 30 years Japan’s GDP could decline catastrophically seeing it fall from its current position as 3rd in the world to 8th. It is now bracing itself for wide-ranging consequences for everything from economic growth to national security and defence. Historically resistant to immigration and with a birth rate of 1 child to every 3 women Japan serves as a salutary example of where all of this may go.

Ironically, the global population is still growing. It is uncertain when population growth will peak but some are predicting this could be as early as the 2060s. What is without question is after this peak there will be significant and rapid decline. As population growth slows down the impacts will start to be felt in nations that experienced rapid growth in the 20th century. Already in Europe countries are facing population stagnation. Even China is beginning to experience the wider impacts of population slow down.

So what do we do to address this?

Well, we need to adopt a totally new and different mindset around immigration that fits the new world in which we are quickly hurtling towards.

The conventional wisdom, still promoted by this Government, is that immigration is a ‘bad’ that needs to be tackled and reduced. The whole apparatus of the UK state is designed to stop people coming to the UK and make life as wretched as possible for those that make it here. That has to change.

We still consider immigration with the outlook of the early part of this century rather than with the realities of what is to come in the later part of it. Far from being a ‘burden’ we might soon be in the situation where immigrants might be at a premium and a highly sought commodity. It is a prospect that would make Nigel Farage’s head explode…

And this couldn’t be happening at a worst possible time. Populists like Farage have made careers out of an antipathy towards immigration and it is they who are now in the political ascendancy. All round the world from the US to Germany to France anti immigration parties and demagogues are sweeping all before them. In the UK Farage’s Reform party now leads in some polls. If successful they will waste no time in further curbing immigration and imposing solutions that are of another time, counter productive to the general economy and everything we don’t need to do to tackle long term population decline.

Unbelievably, there is one country that is predicted to escape the worst of this population stagnation, in the short term anyway, and that nation is the UK.

The UK has made such a hash of their mission to cut immigration that they have inadvertently quadrupled it since lockdown! The Tories didn’t quite understand the post-Brexit visa system they were building believing that halting freedom of movement from the EU would solve all their immigration woes. Obsessed with the very few immigrants who cross the Channel in small boats they didn’t notice the huge numbers coming into the UK through their new visa rules. This Tory blunder will now bequeath the UK a bit of an advantage as this new wave of immigrants give us the extra babies to keep our population stable, for now.

The problem is that this relatively piece of good news could not make them more miserable and this little slither of comfort only propels them into further drastic action against immigrants.

Unfortunately in Scotland we do not share the good fortune of the rest of the UK. Our population is currently around 5.43 million and has grown modestly over the past few years due to the UK’s immigration debacle. Our population, though, is set to be one of the first parts of the UK where population will decline and this could come as early as 2030. At 22% of our population over 65 (compared to 19% in England) and a very low birth rate of 1.3 children per woman we are in just about the worst position when it comes to addressing our demography challenges.

That is why we have been so resolute and persistent in calling for a Scottish visa. We need Scottish solutions for our own Scottish predicament and we need the same range of tools other nations have to address our issues. There is very little disagreement across the business community, civic Scotland and the political parties that we must act. Nearly everybody is aware of the difficulties we are in.

The only thing is the UK is not in the least bit interested. Every time I have raised this in Parliament it is a total rebuff. Every time Scottish Government colleagues try to engage the UK Government they are told where to go.

That is because this new Labour Government is just as captured by the anti immigration rhetoric of Farage and are determined to reduce immigration as much as the Conservatives. On Monday they will introduce their first Immigration Bill and other than scrapping the bonkers Rwanda Scheme Labour will continue with the same failed Tory approach with an almost exclusive focus once again on small boats. Do not expect any new thinking. Do not expect them to get serious about our demography issues.

We need a new mindset and we need a reassessment of the value of immigration. We live in an inter connected world where the movement of peoples has never been so profound. If conflict breaks out in one part of the world it is only natural the people there will do what they can to move to avoid it.

We have to be more creative in dealing with this stark reality. Create safe routes that align with skill and labour shortages in countries facing population stagnation. We need to look at immigration as a benefit that could help save us in the future. Instead all we can look forward to are further pointless and useless anti immigration policies and an increase in the volume of anti-immigration rhetoric as the populists get their hands on the levers of power.

God help us.

Pete Wishart is the SNP’s Home Affairs Spokesperson and the SNP’s Westminster Deputy Leader.