An Aberdeen MP has said EU nationals would be “unadvised” to come to the UK to live and work because of uncertainty over Brexit.
Callum McCaig spoke out as he warned the north-east’s economy risked being “undermined” if it was unable to attract the Eastern European workers on which the city had come to depend.
The Aberdeen South MP and former city council leader was part of a high-profile panel at a Press and Journal business briefing event to discuss the fallout of the vote to leave the EU.
Home Secretary Theresa May – the frontrunner to succeed David Cameron as prime minister – has caused fury by refusing to guarantee the rights of EU citizens settled here to stay after divorce with Brussels.
She came under pressure to back down from Conservative Aberdeenshire councillor Jill Webster – another of the expert pundits – who said foreign workers in her businesses were scared for their future.
“I would like to be in a position to reassure them that they are going to be welcome and can stay here. It is something to be worried about,” she told the audience of business leaders at the Marcliffe Hotel.
“It is quite an easy thing to say and hopefully it’s quite an easy thing to do to give that assurance that those who are working here already and have made their homes here will be welcome.”
Mr McCaig said he did not believe anyone would eventually be forced to leave but questioned why anyone would now want to come to the UK.
“It’s utterly shameful that the Government is using people who have chosen to live here and to work here as a pawn in the Brexit negotiations,” he said.
“The other bigger problem is the message that this sends out to folk about our openness and willingness to have people come.
“There are something like 11,000 EU nationals living in Aberdeen. So that is 5-6% of our community.
“If we aren’t able to regenerate that by more folk coming in, it will undermine a large part of how work is done here. We are reliant on folk who come, largely from Eastern Europe, who are doing jobs we couldn’t do before.
“If you are in Poland right now looking for somewhere to go and live and work, are you going to choose the UK? If you are quite frankly you would be unadvised to do so.”
