Have we had the full story about foreign workers? Peter Hain has admitted the figure of those arriving here since 1997 is 1.1 million, not 800,000, and Caroline Flint said on the radio she would like to “acknowledge” that this makes up 8% of the workforce. As many newspapers observe today, this means of the 2.7m “new jobs” created under Labour, some 40% have gone to foreigners. Embarrassing, yes, but surely that draws a line under the affair?
Not quite. CoffeeHousers may remember a recent Home Office submission to the House of Lords which said (click here, p14) that foreigners make up 12.5% of the workforce. And as for the overall total, a parliamentary answer (442W) in July said that, in the first quarter of this year “there were 1.5 million overseas born people in employment who had entered the UK in the last ten years”. A far higher number that may well be revised dramatically upwards in light of the new discovery.
The difference is not all foreign-born are foreign nationals. Mr Hain was talking about a subset. So when you include all immigrants (people born overseas who have come to this country) they make up the majority (55%) of the 2.7m new jobs created since 1997. If one adds the 300,000 newly-discovered immigrants, it would be two thirds. Did somebody say “British jobs for British workers?”
PS The subset of 1.1m immigrants which Hain talks are those who work without a British passport and still count as foreign nationals (ie Poles, French etc). Many immigrants are now, of course, British nationals.
PPS I understand the mistake lay with the DWP, not with the Office for National Statistics. So the 1.5m figure is not liable to be revised. It is the real figure for immigrants who have taken (and in many cases created through their work ethic) most of the 2.7m new jobs in Britain since 1997.
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