My Note in FT Today In Reply to Sir Rocco Forte FT Article on EU Workers in Britain

On Saturday 4 December the Financial Times published a comment piece by Sir Rocco Forte, the hotelier and strong supporter of Brexit and hostility to partnership in Europe.

He wrote with his views on immigration policy and was interviewed respectfully on BBC R4 Today a week ago.

Today the FT publishes some point I make correcting his rather simplistic approach to the the UK's labour market policy when we were in the EU which in my view was one of the reasons that the majority of working class voters voted for Brexit.

"Sir Rocco Forte raises good points about Britain shutting its doors to European workers. (Opinion Immigration 4 December). The question he might ask is why does no other European country have such relentless hostility to EU citizens working within their borders??

???????????Some?answers include the fact that local workers know who is in their country. The UK had an embryonic identity card system in place in 2010 as well as a registration system for EU workers. As Home Secretary, Theresa May shut both down leaving many red wall workers angry that the state had no interest in even knowing who was working in the UK.?

???????????In most continental nations mandatory works councils allow hiring to be done on a social partnership basis thus assuring local workers their bosses were not privileging foreign employees.

???????????In Britain, trade unions have been all but eliminated from the private sector so workers feel they have no voice as scores of thousands of foreign workers arrived.

???????????I sat in cabinet committees as Treasury or Health ministers ranted against measures the rest of Europe accepted like the Agency Employees Directive, the 48 Hour Working Time Directive (which allow plenty of derogations), the Posted Workers Directive and other so-called Social Europe measures which British politicians and employers?opposed and scorned. The message to British workers was their own government preferred to maximise immigration of low-pay workers at local employees’ expense.

???????????UK taxpayers have subsidised low-pay employees from Europe and while Sir Rocco told the BBC his waiters and chamber-maids earn more than ￡30,000 too many of his fellow bosses in the hospitality industry rely on taxpayer subsidies to keep their workers above the poverty line. A living wage labour market has disappeared over the last four decades.

???????????Sir Rocco tells us his German firms?have 100 apprentices. But the CBI and Treasury have set their face like flint against any German, or Swiss, or Nordic compulsory apprenticeship type apprenticeship schemes paid for by employers which sent out signals to local youngsters that British employers wanted to hire them rather than bring in European citizens who had been properly trained.

???????????Switzerland where 27% of the population is foreign born had a referendum two years ago that defeated moves by the populist right to end Freedom of Movement. There is little chance of having a sensible debate on immigration from Europe without first examining the British labour market which is organised very differently from continental Europe and which allowed the populist?demagogues advocating isolation from. Europe to succeed in 2016"

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