Labour MP in migrant worker row

Jo Faragher

Shadow immigration minister Chris Bryant this week became embroiled in a row over recruiting migrant workers.

In a speech leaked to newspapers, the Labour MP claimed that “unscrupulous employers” exploited migrant labourers while undercutting the local labour market, citing Tesco and Next as examples.

Bryant later edited his speech to remove some of the critical excerpts relating to the retailers, but still claimed Tesco had moved a distribution centre to Kent where “a large percentage” of staff were “from Eastern bloc” countries, and that Next used the flamejobs.pl recruitment agency, whose website was written “entirely in Polish”.

The speech came amid criticism from the Labour party of the Home Office’s use of vans in London bearing the slogan “Go home” to try to encourage illegal immigrants to turn themselves in.

In his final speech, Bryant urged UK businesses to recruit “locally”. He said: “I want to see the government take action – working with companies – to make sure they can recruit more local young people, qualified to do the job.”

Commenting on Bryant’s speech, Kevin Green, CEO of the REC said: “There was a distinct lack of substance to Chris Bryant’s speech and he had no clear evidence to show that British businesses have failed to comply with the current legislation around immigration and employment.”

“There are clear rules and regulations that British businesses must adhere to when employing workers from the UK or abroad. Some companies may look to overseas staff to fill the positions that they have advertised and cannot fill in the UK, which is a legitimate practice and does not discriminate against UK workers.”