There’s been a lot of hot air over the past week about what the government and Labour are calling Britain’s “dependency” on migrant labour. But if there is a dependency, it’s one of their own making. Chronic underinvestment in training and skills, lags in technological advancements, declining apprenticeships along with poor pay and working conditions mean that employers have had little incentive to invest in a British workforce. The result is there are many jobs that Brits are unwilling or unable to do, and migrants have long been filling the gaps.
The bedrock of the UK’s liberal market economy is labour flexibility, and successive governments have relied on migrant workers to provide this: New Labour created it and the Conservatives have happily fed off it since.
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