Ed Miliband: Carers must be able to speak English

 
Britain's opposition Labour Party leader Ed Miliband smiles during speeches at the party's annual conference in Manchester, northern England September 30, 2012. REUTERS
Reuters

Ed Miliband toughened Labour’s approach to immigration today by saying that key public sector staff like carers must be able to speak English.

New rules for the public sector would insist that anyone seeking a job dealing with customers would have to speak the national language first.

“Many people being paid the lowest wages do a fantastic job working as care workers,” he said. “But older people of different backgrounds often say that the limited English skills of some care workers present them with difficulties.”

In other pledges, he said Labour would ban recruitment agencies from offering jobs only to workers from other countries, and would strengthen minimum wage protection to prevent British workers being undercut. Stronger laws would ban shift patterns that kept people working alongside others from the same nationality or background.

He called for a clampdown on slum landlords, citing one case in Newham where 38 migrants, including 16 children, were found squeezed into a single house. “It’s far too easy for unscrupulous landlords to prey on newcomers to our country,” he said.

Making a keynote speech in south London, Mr Miliband said all new arrivals should learn the language.

“We can only converse if we can speak the same language,” he said. “So if we are going to build one nation, we need to start with everyone in Britain knowing how to speak English. We should expect that of people who come here.”

While he hailed the success of “multi-ethnic, diverse Britain”, he said better integration should be a priority. Labour would divert funding from some “non-essential” translations of documents to providing English lessons to newcomers.

Immigrants might have to sign agreements with schools that they would help their children learn English. Concern about the poor English of some migrant workers was fuelled two years ago when a German doctor accidentally caused the death of a patient.

The speech comes after the latest census results revealed one in three Londoners was born overseas.

Mr Miliband admitted at his party’s conference that Labour had failed to take voters’ concerns about the impact of immigration seriously enough while in office.

Anti-immigration campaigner Sir Andrew Green argued that the Labour leader’s new proposals did not go far enough. “It’s simply not enough, frankly, to pop up now and say ‘we’ll do something about English language teaching’,” he said.

“We’re left with an enormous problem of integration and these measures are, by comparison with that, pretty trivial.”

Ukip leader Nigel Farage said: “It’s a bit rich and a bit late. It was their policy to encourage mass immigration and create a clientele of welfare-dependent immigrants who would vote Labour.”

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