Miliband vows foreign labour moves (From Gazette & Herald)

Miliband vows foreign labour moves

12:05am Friday 22nd June 2012 in National News © Press Association 2013

Labour leader Ed Miliband will promise new measures to prevent British people being "locked out" of jobs by foreign workers, including forcing firms to declare if they employ high numbers of immigrants.

Overseas-only employment agencies would be banned and an early-warning system set up to highlight areas where locals are "dominated" by an influx of overseas labour under the proposals.

While there could not be set quotas on home-grown workers, urgent action was required to identify where British jobseekers need better training to compete, Mr Miliband will say.

Demanding that job centres be told of all firms where more than one in four staff was from overseas would form part of the new system to provide Whitehall and town halls with vital information.

Mr Miliband hopes to shift the focus of the debate from border controls, and what he says are ineffective Government caps on arrivals, towards the impact on people's daily lives. While restrictions on new arrivals, including caps on people from any new EU member state, were necessary, reforming the jobs market is just as important, he will argue.

Stricter enforcement of minimum wage laws and doubling fines to £10,000 would also form part of an effort to stop firms using cheap foreign labour to undercut domestic jobseekers.

"We need to talk about one of the biggest issues facing our country: immigration from eastern Europe has collided with a labour market in Britain which is too often nasty, brutish and short term," he will declare in a speech to the left-leaning IPPR thinktank in London.

"If we are to address people's concerns, Labour must change its approach to immigration. But we will only be able to answer people's concerns on immigration if we change our economy too."

Under his blueprint, the Migration Advisory Committee would gather data to alert Whitehall and local councils to areas becoming "dominated by low-wage labour from other countries".

A Home Office source said: "Ed Miliband says he is not going to promise British jobs for British workers but he seems to have fallen into the same trap as Gordon Brown. He still opposes everything the Government is doing to cut and control immigration and still isn't offering a single credible immigration policy of his own."