Businesses have been urged by a Cabinet minister to give jobs to unemployed British youths after figures showed that nearly 90 per cent of positions created since last year went to workers from abroad.
Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, is expected to say in a speech today that Britain needed an “immigration system that gives the unemployed a level playing field”.
The minister’s comments, echoing the pledge in 2007 by Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister, of “British jobs for British workers”, were made after it was revealed by Frank Field, a Labour MP, that 87 per cent of the 400,000 jobs created over the first year of the coalition went to workers from abroad.
Mr Brown was criticised when it emerged that about 80 per cent of the jobs created during Labour’s time in power went to migrants.
Mr Duncan Smith, in extracts of a speech he is giving in Madrid to the Spanish Foundation for Analysis and Social Studies, said the Government had “a contract with the British people”, adding: “We risk leaving more British citizens out of work, and the most vulnerable group who will be the most affected are young people.”
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Controlling immigration was “critical” to avoid “losing another generation to dependency and hopelessness”, he said.