Posted on 25th Jun 2012 in News

Labour Leader, Ed Miliband, last week confronted and publicly accepted Labour’s failure to anticipate the huge influx of central and eastern European migrants, which was seen as contributory factor to their failure in the 2010 election. 

What the discussion has raised is the issue of why the UK economic model favours the supply of foreign labour over the nation’s youth. Milliband referred to the "nasty, brutish, and short term" nature of many jobs with bad conditions, low pay and little training that are not attracting the British youth. Milliband has called for "better early warning systems" to identify those employers, sectors and regions that are dominated by these low-paid temporary jobs and the migrant workers who tend to fill them. 

His speech has attracted a lot of commentary. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research has highlighted that there is little evidence that migration from within Europe has significantly affected jobs or wages for British workers. 

The debate has also raised the issue as to whether soaring youth unemployment has more to do with poor educational attainment and the lack of apprenticeships and training opportunities rather than the level of migration.

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