Date:14/12/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/12/14/stories/2007121456121700.htm

International

Call for sons-of-the-soil job policy in U.K.

Hasan Suroor

LONDON: In a startling revelation, the British government has admitted that 80 per cent of the jobs created in the country since Labour came to power in 1997 had gone to foreigners, prompting angry calls for a sons-of-the-soil policy to protect the interests of native Britons.

Figures, released by the Statistics Commission, contradicted earlier government claims that only 50 per cent of the jobs had been filled by outsiders.

This led to accusations that the government had tried to conceal the real scale of the “negative” impact of immigration on jobs and public services.

A clarification by the commission that its estimate was higher because it had used a different criterion for its definition of a “foreigner” failed to satisfy critics who mounted a fresh campaign to demand tougher immigration controls. The commission’s estimate was higher because it included an additional 3,00,000 workers who were now British citizens but were born abroad.

Previous government figures had excluded foreign-born British citizens.

Labour MPs joined in calling for more stringent measures to restrict the tide of flow of immigrants. Tories attacked the government’s employment policy with the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Chris Grayling calling it an “abject failure”. All that the government had done was to “create British jobs for foreign workers”, he said.

The row came on the heels of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s pledge about “British jobs for British workers”. He made the pledge at the Labour Party conference in September in response to concerns over British jobs being outsourced to other countries including India.