Foreign workers have taken 80 per cent of all new jobs created under Labour

 

By STEVE DOUGHTY - More by this author » Last updated at 20:15pm on 10th December 2007 Comments

Gordon Brown's 'British jobs for British workers' campaign has been criticised in the wake of new figures

 

Immigrants have snapped up as many as four out of five of all new jobs created since Labour came to power, Whitehall analysts have said.

Their verdict was a huge embarassment to Cabinet ministers who claimed that most jobs have gone to British workers, and who pretended that the number of foreign workers in the country is much lower than the real total.

And it brought new criticism for the Prime Minister and his promise of "British jobs for British workers".

The calculation of how many migrant workers there really are in Britain was made by the Statistics Commission, a body set up by Labour to check the integrity of official statistics.

The Commission was called in by Labour MP Frank Field during the row at the end of October when ministers were caught out giving wrong figures for numbers of immigrant workers in the economy.

Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain was forced to admit that the number of foreign nationals who have taken jobs in Britain since 1997 was not 800,000 but 1.1 million.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith tried to defend Mr Hain by saying this meant that the majority of new jobs had still gone to Britons. She was rapidly proved wrong.

Yesterday the Commission said that, using figures that provide the clearest picture of immigration, the number of workers born abroad who have taken jobs in Britain since Labour came to power is 1.4 million.

This, it said, makes up 81 per cent of all new jobs taken by people of working age.

The Commission said figures for migrant workers were different, depending on how an immigrant is defined.

It checked evidence of numbers both of workers who were born abroad and who are foreign nationals, and numbers of workers below and above retirement age.

Workers born abroad, it said, made up 81 per cent of the 1.7 million new jobs taken since 1997 by people of working age.

They made up 68 per cent of the 2.1 million jobs taken by people of all ages, including those above retirement age.

The Commission said counting workers born abroad as opposed to workers who are foreign citizens gives a clearer picture of the realities of immigration. Mr Hain's officials at the DWP have been giving figures based on numbers of foreign citizens in work.

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Under Labour the majority of new jobs have went to immigrants

 

Mr Field, the MP for Birkenhead who was Tony Blair's first welfare reform minister, said: "We are even further from seeing British workers getting British jobs than we thought.

"The economy has been creating an unprecedented number of jobs, and we have really keen people from abroad coming to do them. Often British workers are not getting a look in."

He called for the Government to stop Eastern Europeans taking jobs in Britain.

Mr Field said: "We could have stopped Polish and other Eastern European workers from coming when their countries joined the European Union.

"But we didn't, because the Home Office said there would only be five to 13,000 arriving every year.

"The Government should now go to the European Commission in Brussels and ask for permission to stop the movement of workers from Eastern Europe.

"This is clearly damaging the British labour market, and British unemployed people are not moving into work."

Tories said the Prime Minister's promise for British workers had been shown to be empty.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: "So much for Gordon Brown's dubious, factually inaccuarate and potentially illegal comment of "British Jobs for British workers".

"We now know that 80 per cent of these jobs were filled by people from abroad.

"When will Gordon Brown learn that uncontrolled immigration leads to uncontrollable pressures on public services, housing, schools and community relations?"

The Statistics Commission said that estimates of numbers of newly-employed foreign workers ranged from just over 50 per cent, if foreign citizens alone are counted, to 80 per cent, if the total is based on numbers of workers born abroad.

It said that totals also changed if workers of over retirement age were counted alongside those of normal working age.

Its report said country of birth gave the clearest picture because "information about country of birth would seem to be more relevant to questions about migration - people who have come to this country from abroad - than information about nationality, which can change over time."

The Commission added: "Secondly, we feel that survey answers to questions about country of birth may be more reliable than answers to questions about nationality."

All the estimates are based on interpretations of the Labour Force Survey, a large-scale poll carried out regularly by the Government's Office for National Statistics.

It said: "Government departments might need to agree on a common approach to answering these questions so as to avoid continuing confusion. We understand that discussions to this end are taking place."

Mr Hain's Department of Work and Pensions insisted the Commission's findings showed it had got its facts right - at least at the second time of asking, when Mr Hain gave MPs the 1.1 million figure for numbers of foreign workers.

A spokesman said: "The Commission has confirmed the revised estimates we issued in October are correct. Of the 2.1m increase in employment since 1997, about 1m were UK nationals and 1.1m foreign nationals.

'There have been, and remain, British jobs for British workers. Consistently there have been more than 600,000 job vacancies on any given day in a strong and stable economy.

"This, allied to the fact that the number on key out of work benefits has fallen by a million in the last decade, shows that there are jobs there and that people are coming off benefits and getting into work."

Government figures say the real out-of-work total, including people claiming incapacity benefit has dropped from 5.7 million to 5.3 million over the last few years.

The DWP did not explain how in October Home Secretary Miss Smith came to claim that a majority of new jobs had gone to British workers.

Tory Work and Pensions spokesman Chris Grayling said: "Gordon Brown's welfare to work policies have clearly been an abject failure and all he has done is create British jobs for foreign workers."

british people still have far better chances to get a job than foreigners.

 

i hate the way the british media report on this topic.

 

its just an other way of saying 'lets throw them all out'. dont they ever realise that britain is partly responsible for the fact that they've got so many foreign people in their country?