Gordon Brown has used the easy availability of migrant labour to duck the need for reform of the welfare system to help British people into work, Conservatives claimed last night.
In a decade when immigrants have filled many of Britain’s job vacancies and boosted the country’s economic growth, millions of homegrown workers have been left on benefits, said shadow work and pensions secretary Chris Grayling.
Mr Grayling called for action to help jobless people “break out of a cycle of under-achievement”, including mandatory back-to-work programmes for prisoners leaving jail and English lessons for those whose lack of language skills are stopping them finding employment.
He will spell out Tory plans in a speech in London today, in which he will also call for compulsory work-related activities for young able-bodied people who are on the dole for three months.
Mr Grayling will say that the capital has enjoyed a decade of prosperity in which “there really should have been a job for everyone” but which has instead seen the persistence of pockets of entrenched poverty and welfare dependency.
Meanwhile, government financial projections have operated on the assumption that workers will come from abroad to fill vacancies in the British economy.
Mr Grayling will say: “I think Gordon Brown has used the influx of migrant workers as a way of ducking the issue of welfare reform, and as a result, has left millions of people stranded in poverty who could and should have been helped back to work over the last decade.
“After all his rhetoric on poverty, he has failed to deliver the sea change he has promised. And immigration has provided him with a safety net for the economic impact of that failure.”
After more than a decade of economic growth, one in five working-age people in London is on benefits, child poverty remains unchanged and for many people poverty and deprivation are “endemic”, Mr Grayling will say.
“It’s not that the work hasn’t been there. Thousands of people have moved into all areas of London from overseas to find jobs. That is part of what makes this city so successful.
“But it also demonstrates how badly this government has let down those excluded from the labour market.
“Why on earth are we paying out vast amounts of money to keep people out of work, when jobs are there and being filled by people from overseas? Why has the government stood idly by while such an absurd situation develops?”