Little seems to have been learned from Gordon Brown’s ‘British jobs for British people’ populist sloganeering – Employment Minister Chris Grayling has taken a similar tack this weekend.
On Sky News this weekend Grayling said that that young British people out of work should be given priority over immigrant applicants, including those from Eastern Europe. Under employment laws based on the EU’s single market, it is illegal for British employers to discriminate against non-British applicants from elsewhere in the EU.
But Grayling insisted: "It is my hope that every employer in the UK, in deciding if they are going to recruit in the next few months, will put young UK unemployed people at the top of their priority list. We'll do everything we can to encourage them to do so."
Government figures last week showed as unemployment reached around 1 million in those aged 16-24, the number of foreign nationals with jobs had also gone up – by 166,000 in one year
Grayling said that unqualified British workers were at a disadvantage. "They come out of school or college, they don't have previous experience, they may be up against someone who has come to the UK from Eastern Europe, who is five or six years older, who has got work experience already and are quite an attractive recruitment option for the employer,” he suggested.
