UK Edition
The suggestion that British companies will be "named and shamed" for employing too many foreign workers brought opprobrium down on the head of Amber Rudd, the new Home Secretary, last week. Some critics likened the idea, preposterously, to the xenophobia of Nazi Germany.
Miss Rudd had some cause to feel aggrieved, as she did not actually say this in her speech to the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham. Rather, it was the impression given by later briefings, and the Home Office hardly went out of its way to discourage speculation that some sort of "foreigners list" was in the pipeline.
That mistake is now being rectified. The idea of forcing businesses to identify publicly how many overseas employees they have on their books is anathema to the British sense of tolerant fair play and runs counter to the outward-looking attitude that needs to be projected post-Brexit. Anything that smacks of insularity would be deeply damaging to the country's reputation.
Several Cabinet ministers took to the airwaves yesterday to signal a tactical retreat, insisting that the Government had no intention of scapegoating foreign workers in this way.
However, leaving this particular controversy aside, there is a point here that Miss Rudd was perfectly entitled to make without the roof falling in on her head. She was essentially asking a question that many want an answer to: are UK companies setting out to recruit staff from abroad without even considering whether there are British workers capable of filling the jobs? The argument that home-grown employees are either unwilling to take particular jobs or are less "employable" than their EU counterparts has become an excuse for failing to look hard enough or simply ignoring the potential recruits on our own doorstep because labour is cheaper abroad.
To back up Miss Rudd's concerns, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of companies advertising only in eastern European countries for jobs that British workers never get to apply for. A reluctance to address these issues and a sense that popular concerns are being ignored by politicians and business leaders were reasons why the country voted to leave the EU. Is it really controversial to ask companies if there are British workers capable of doing the jobs before they look abroad? And if there really aren't, the Government needs to ask why not?
Britain's jobs issue still needs be to be addressed