'Fewer New Jobs Going To UK-Born Workers'

The Work and Pensions Secretary has admitted fewer new jobs were going to UK-born workers and the situation was "getting worse".











Iain Duncan Smith said the Government must push ahead with welfare change to "reform a group that's progressively less able to do the work".

He has called for the benefits system to be simplified with a universal credit and work incentives to be used to tackle worklessness.

"I always argued that the last Conservative government freed up the markets, but what was missing was the next bit," he told The Spectator.

"Getting society in Britain ready to meet that change. We never did.

"We ended up with a sort of mid-20th century society, many locked away in welfarism, and a 21st century economy.

"We see now that one cannot meet the results of the other. It's not optional.

"If anything tells you that it's not optional, look at the 2.5 million jobs created under Labour out of which at least 60% went to foreign nationals."

According to the Spectator, latest figures from the Office of National Statistics show in the second quarter of 2010 there were 24,287,000 UK-born people in work, this dropped to 24,188,000 in the second quarter of 2011 - a fall of 99,000.

It's getting worse, and it's getting worse because we face the problem of having to reform a group that's progressively less able to do the work.

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith

During the same period, the number of foreign-born people in work rose by 278,000 to 4,080,000.

Mr Duncan Smith added: "It's getting worse, and it's getting worse because we face the problem of having to reform a group that's progressively less able to do the work.

"That's why I believe we're in the last chance saloon.

"Last week [the riots] was a wake-up call for us but we should thank our lucky stars that we had one."

Last month he appealed to businesses to employ young and unemployed British people ahead of "labour from abroad".

Former prime minister Gordon Brown was criticised after his 2007 pledge to provide "British jobs for British workers".

Figures released after his statement showed around 80% of jobs created during Labour's time in power went to migrants.

The definitions of "UK-born" and "foreign-born" are set by the European Commission.

Asylum Seekers Are Lured To The UK By Its 'Enormous' Benefits, Says Calais Mayor In Blistering Attack On Britain

Britain's ‘enormous’ state handouts to asylum seekers were furiously criticised yesterday – by the Mayor of Calais.

Natacha Bouchart said these payouts were the lure for thousands of foreigners using the French port as a staging point to cross the Channel illegally.















'Disgusted': Mayor Natacha Bouchart.

She said the UK government’s policy was ‘imposing’ migrants on the town, costing the local economy millions.

Mrs Bouchart, 45, a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ruling UMP party, said she was so disgusted by what was going on that she refused to have any meetings with British government representatives.

She said the British system was predominantly to blame for thousands of Africans, eastern Europeans and Asians trying to clamber aboard lorries and trains in Calais every day.

‘Requesting asylum is easier with them (the British) than in France. The asylum seeker is given accommodation and receives up to £40 a week according to

their case, when the annual income of the average Eritrean is around $200 (£135).

‘That seems enormous and it’s attractive to them.’

In Britain, asylum seekers can receive payments as soon as a claim is lodged. In France, an asylum seeker generally is given nothing for six months.

That is because the French bureaucratic system means it routinely takes a minimum of six months to have a claim for asylum – and with it the opportunity to receive state support – accepted.

Once accepted, the claimant can receive a range of benefits – but almost all prefer to try to reach Britain and secure immediate benefits.













Destination Britain: Some of the thousands of would-be asylum seekers in Calais.

Married asylum-seeking couples in the UK receive £66.13 a week, while single people get up to £42.16. They are also entitled to free NHS care, housing and education for any children.

Home Office Minister Phil Woolas has been seeking closer cooperation with France in the hope of preventing the crisis in Calais from escalating.

Ministers have been alarmed by figures showing the number of migrants caught trying to reach Britain by stowing away on lorries at Calais has doubled over the last year to more than 2,000 a month.

The count of 6,031 in the first three months of this year compares with 2,919 caught by port security services trying to gain access to trucks queueing for ferries between January and March 2008.

The pressure on the port of Calais is being matched at the Channel Tunnel terminal outside the town, which has reported a 50 per cent rise in illegal migrants over last year. Most are trying to board lorries waiting for places on freight trains.

Mrs Bouchart said she had received many requests for a meeting with UK officials to attempt to sort out the mess.

‘I’ve never followed them up because I consider them provocative. To receive in the city hall a representative of the British governmentis to support what it imposes on us.’

The mayor pointed out that the Calais Chamber of Trade was having to pay £12million a year to secure the port area – money she suggested the French government should provide.










Calling for a ‘change in attitude’, Mrs Bouchart said the current build-up of UK-bound foreigners was ‘untenable’.

‘Each day the town of Calais finds itself under psychological pressure because of the presence of the migrants.

‘That blocks our economic development. That stops some businesses from establishing themselves and that costs a lot.’

Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green said: ‘The Mayor of Calais is right that the long-term chaos in our immigration system, from badly-protected borders to the Home Office not sending an officer to many appeal hearings, encourages people to try their luck.

‘The answer for Britain and the people of Calais is a well-run immigration system with a proper Border Police Force.’

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationWatch UK, said: ‘Gallic logic has reached the inescapable conclusion that Britain is a soft touch for asylum seekers.

‘You only have to say the word asylum and you have an 80 per cent chance of staying in Britain, more often than not illegally.’

In response, Mr Woolas said: ‘The illegal migrants in Calais are not queueing to get into Britain – they have been locked out by one of the toughest border crossings in the world. These successful controls have been possible thanks to the close co-operation of the French government.

‘Benefits are only available to those who play by the rules, work hard, pay taxes and learn to speak English.

‘I have made it clear that those trying to cheat our system will not be tolerated, which is why last year UK Border Agency staff worked tirelessly at our French and Belgium controls – stopping more than 28,000 attempts to cross the Channel illegally.’

Immigration Amnesty: David Cameron's Government Has Failed To Do Its Duty

Looking at the UK Border Agency, it found it to still be, in John Reid’s famous words, “unfit for purpose”. The Agency has been engaged in an attempt to clear a backlog of some 450,000 cases involving would-be asylum cases, some dating back to the 1990s and “lost” or hidden until they were discovered in 2006.













Over 400,000 cases have now been closed. But fewer than 40,000 people have been deported compared to more than 160,000 who have simply been told they can stay, regardless of the merits of their cases. 75,000 cases have been put back on the shelves because those people have simply disappeared.

One has to have some sympathy for the Agency and the Home Office. A combination of the poisonous inheritance of the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act, and the judicial imperialist judges of Strasbourg have rendered it all but impossible for the Agency to do its job, quite apart from its own shortcomings. The Lib-Dem/Con Coalition has failed to honour the Prime Minister’s election pledge to replace the Human Rights Act and has no intention of contracting out of the European Convention on Human Rights, either formally, or in the French style of ignoring it.

The Committee concluded that “in practice an amnesty has taken place, at a considerable cost to the taxpayer”. But in an immense act of self-deception (for it will deceive no one else) the Immigration Minister, Damian Green, said: “There is absolutely no amnesty.”

It is time the Government remembered that if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it probably is a duck.

Contrary to what was promised before the election there has been an amnesty. The Prime Minister should remember too that the first duty above all others of Government is to secure the nation’s borders against unwelcome intruders, whether they come under arms, under lorries or under the protection of foreign jurisdictions. A government which cannot do that is not a sovereign government at all.


There was plenty of variety in your comments this week, but it was some comfort to me that those who had most connections with the Middle East, or connections with particular countries there, confirmed my view that it was a more peaceable and a safer place for British people fifty years ago than it is now. That was also the view of wild_rover 2011 and crown armourer. Several of you, including flatulent_emmissions and mockpudding agreed that what follows Gaddafii and Mubaruk will be no improvement, whilst auntycensorship saw Libya as a humanitarian disaster and oggy rightly questioned whether bombing people into democracy is a good idea, and vingoe feared that our intervention in Egypt might open the way for the Moslem Brotherhood to take power.

Igonikon Jacl posted a very good piece on the consequences of our (Christian) Reformation and those of a lack of a Muslim one. That chimed with my view and that of mpjones that not every country regardless of its state of cultural and political development is best off with democracy, and pragmatist pointed to the experience of China. Then jeongu observed that Western democracy is different to the Muslim variety and marcusleeds suggested that there cannot be democracy where Islam allows no separation of mosque and state.

All in all, we seem to be mostly pessimistic about whether the Arab Spring will be good for the Middle East, or for us. Nor was there much optimism about immigration, but as my blog post today returned to that subject I will confine myself to saying that although Johny Rottenborough said that both NuLab and my Party “had betrayed us”, I would add that my Party did not do so whilst I had influence in it. It would pay him, and others, to read Migration Watch and remember who flung open the gates, when and why.

The subject of immigration (and indeed of Europe) spilled over into a discussion of democracy here. There were plenty of posts like those from kingarthur 93, alhamilton, unrepresented and others, not to mention jebberisback who led the intellectual Left wing by regretting that the IRA had not murdered me as well as so many of my friends, claimed that there was nothing that they could do to make the democratic system work. Obviously some of you were stung by my questio0: “Where were you when it was all going wrong?”, pleading that it is impossible to change parties, or to win through from a weak position. So what about Alex Salmond? He has changed things. Or what about the Blairite modernisers? Come to that how did the Liberals come from where they were not long ago to being in Government? Or, if you prefer how did the Thatcherites bust the postwar consensus and then fall prey to the neo-Blairite modernisers.

David Cameron Rejects Cable Immigration Criticism

David Cameron has hit back at criticism by cabinet colleague Vince Cable over his promise to cut immigration to "tens of thousands" of people a year.










The Lib Dem business secretary said the prime minister had been "very unwise" and that such a target was Conservative - not coalition government - policy.

He added that Mr Cameron's comments, made in a speech to Tory activists, "risked inflaming extremism".

But the prime minister denied this and said his words had been "measured".

Labour leader Ed Miliband said ministers had to "get a grip" on immigration and stop fighting amongst themselves.

The Conservatives' 2010 election manifesto calls for "steps to take net migration back to the levels of the 1990s - tens of thousands a year, not hundreds of thousands".

However, the coalition agreement between the Conservatives and Lib Dems pledges only an "annual limit" on people coming to the UK from outside the European Union for economic reasons, making no reference to specific numbers.
'Untruthful'

But in his speech, which took place in Southampton, Mr Cameron said the government's cap on immigrant numbers would "mean net migration to this country will be in the order of tens of thousands each year, not the hundreds of thousands every year that we have seen over the last decade".

Communities had been affected by incomers unable to speak English and unwilling to integrate, he argued, which had "created a kind of discomfort and disjointedness in some neighbourhoods".

He added: "This has been the experience for many people in our country - and I believe it is untruthful and unfair not to speak about it and address it."

But Mr Cable, who has spoken out on several occasions about the economic dangers of imposing a cap on immigration, criticised the wording of the speech, telling BBC chief political correspondent Laura Kuenssberg: "The reference to the tens of thousands of immigrants rather than hundreds of thousands is not part of the coalition agreement; it is Tory party policy only.

"I do understand there is an election coming but talk of mass immigration risks inflaming the extremism to which he and I are both strongly opposed."

But the prime minister rejected the criticism, saying policy was "sensible and measured" and that, following discussions between the coalition partners on how to reduce immigration without damaging the economy, the issue had been "settled".

"We have a very good and robust policy and this is the policy of the whole government," he said. "This policy is Lib Dem policy. This policy is coalition policy."
'Choice of language'

Mr Cable, however, refused to back down on the issue, when questioned, telling BBC Manchester: "The reference to tens of thousands rather than hundreds of thousands of people is not part of coalition policy."

He added: "My references were about the language used and I stand by that, but it's not a criticism of coalition policy."

Mr Cable said he had meant to make a "positive contribution to the debate".
Continue reading the main story
image of Laura Kuenssberg Laura Kuenssberg Chief political correspondent, BBC News channel

The strength of Vince Cable's language is really quite unusual, remarkable even.

The coalition's policy on immigration was the result of difficult negotiations between the two parties - the Lib Dems wanted a more relaxed approach to limiting numbers coming here, the Conservatives a tougher one.

Vince Cable personally fought for and secured certain concessions which he felt were needed to prevent a cap damaging British businesses.

After those negotiations, a kind of truce was reached, but Mr Cable clearly thinks David Cameron's comments break that truce.

The business secretary's remarks must also be seen in the context of the upcoming local elections and AV referendum.

This is the first time that two parties who've had to get used to working together have been pitted against each other.

It seems this could be the first proper skirmish.

* Read Laura's thoughts in full
* In full: Cameron migration speech
* Treasury unease on migration cap

Aides to deputy prime minister, and Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, who unlike Mr Cable saw a copy of the speech before it was released, said he was "proud" of the work both he and Mr Cable had done on the coalition's "sensible" immigration policy.

But they added: "Cameron's language isn't what we would have used… but he's a Conservative leader talking to Conservative voters in the run-up to an election."

Mr Cable was "entitled to the view" that there had been a truce in the coalition over immigration policy, but that was not Mr Clegg's view, the source said.

Before entering power, the Lib Dems were opposed to a fixed limit on immigration and backed an amnesty for some illegal incomers already living in the UK.
'Get a grip'

Labour says the cap, which was introduced recently, will only cover 20% of non-EU migrants and the government is cutting 5,000 staff at the UK Border Agency.

Mr Miliband said: "It's hard to have a government policy that is clear and coherent if your business secretary, who's in charge of your student visa policy, is saying one thing and actually going out of his way to attack the prime minister.

"The next time he makes a speech why don't they get a grip, have a proper discussion in government, get an agreed policy, because that's the right way to run a government."

UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage said little would change on immigration because of the UK's "open border" with the EU.

But former Labour minister Frank Field, co-chairman of the cross-party balanced migration group, said Mr Cameron was on the "right course" in requiring all those wishing to settle in the UK to speak basic English and making it "much tougher" for those working in the UK to eventually gain citizenship.

Asked about criticism of the prime minister's approach, he said immigration policy had been out of step with public opinion for many years because it had been determined by a "liberal elite".

"They will be angry that that period is now at an end," he told the BBC.

Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of pressure group Migration Watch, said: "We should remember that Vince Cable speaks for a tiny minority of the public.

"According to our most recent YouGov opinion poll, conducted last November, only 4% of Lib Dem voters agreed that the present level of immigration is best for Britain, 78% wanted 100,000 or less, 19% did not know".