Migrants took 9 out of 10 jobs created under Labour

Nearly nine out of ten jobs created under Labour went to foreign-born workers, astonishing figures revealed last night.

Official statistics showed the vast majority of the rise in the employment total under the last Government was accounted for by workers born abroad.

Total numbers of those in work went up by two million during 13 years of Labour. But of those jobs, 1.8 million individuals were classed as ‘non-UK born’.

Just a quarter of a million declared themselves to be born in the UK.

The figures, from the Office for National Statistics’ Labour Force Survey, are an indictment of the last Government’s failure to control the influx of migrants, train British workers and tackle welfare dependency.

Just as startlingly, the figures also revealed that the proportion of the foreign-born workforce nearly doubled under Labour – from 7 per cent to 13 per cent.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the Migrationwatch think-tank, said: ‘This is stunning evidence of the need to cut back on the immigration of foreign workers.

‘As long as foreign skills can be obtained “off the shelf”, employers will have no incentive to train British workers.’

The figures were released in a written parliamentary answer to Tory MP James Clappison.

He said: ‘This is a reflection of the huge increase that took place under the previous Government. It does nothing to lessen the case for a cap on migrant numbers.’

The data showed there were just over 26million people aged 16-64 in employment between April and June 1997. Of those 1,946,000 were foreign born, leaving 24,058,000 born in the UK. By the same period this year, the total in jobs was up more than two million, to 28,107,000. Of those, 3,787,000 were born abroad, and 24,314,000 born in the UK.

It means 88 per cent of the rise in employment was accounted for by workers born abroad, and just 12 per cent by those born in the UK.

As Prime Minister, Gordon Brown said economic migration would fall by up to 12 per cent. But his points-based system for overseas workers actually led to totals of foreign workers going up 20 per cent and foreign students by more than 30 per cent.

This week another hole in the points system was revealed as Home Office figures showed just one in four of the 18,780 ‘highly skilled’ migrants allowed in last year managed to find a highly skilled job.

There were also fears a new EU deal with India will lead to ‘British jobs for Indian workers’, by allowing Indian firms to transfer unlimited numbers of staff to the UK without first offering the posts to Britons.

Taken from DM