Britain must kick its unhealthy addiction to cheap foreign labour
Kick this addiction to foreign workers
IMMIGRATION will be a massive battleground at the next election.
Britain cannot keep feeding its unhealthy addiction to cheap foreign labour.
This paper’s Builder Better Britain campaign has long demanded more incentives to boost home-grown jobs.
But last week’s record migration figures showed that it is not just welders and roofers who are being imported from abroad in massive numbers.
Engineers from all backgrounds, social care workers and even fishermen are still being urged to come over and fill gaping vacancies.
Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge to scrap rules that allow sectors with shortages to pay foreign workers less than the going rate has some merit.
But it is a bit rich for the Labour leader to pose as a critic of uncontrolled immigration when it was the last Labour Government that opened the floodgates.
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown also failed to reform the welfare system that is so weighted in favour of people taking benefits rather than jobs.
Suella Braverman admits immigration is too high and says only the Tories can fix it.
That’s all fine, Home Secretary.
But four years ago it was the Tories who invited foreign students to stay for two more years with their dependants after they had finished their courses, swelling work visas.
Stopping the boats is one thing.
But ending cheap migrant labour and getting Brits into those jobs is a vast undertaking.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak must convince voters he has the means to tackle it.
His future at Number Ten depends on it.
Is Morning broken?
THE explosive Phillip Schofield scandal has not only shocked millions of viewers.
It has also thrown up difficult questions about how much ITV executives knew about what was going on right under their noses.
They say they investigated rumours in 2020 of Schofield’s affair with a junior member of staff.
But they were told lies and did not find any firm evidence of a relationship.
That may not be enough for ITV’s investors, or the show’s other stars.
This Morning is the corporation’s flagship show, with a reputation based on a squeaky-clean image.
If advertisers and money men get spooked by the way this affair has been handled, the show could be over . . . along with the careers of bosses who bungled it.