Overseas workers have helped City win its reputation
COMMENTARY: Thank God for immigration. It means our London-based major international businesses are able to recruit the talent they need to drive them forward.
David Cameron is right to draw attention to foreigners turning parts of the country into ghettoes. The fact that he's engaging in some pretty blatant electioneering - timing his intervention with local elections in the North and Midlands, the areas worst affected - is cynical but it should not negate his message.
Where he is wrong, though, is not to make more of the real problem, which is that too many Britons are not prepared to work, and, by implication, to include London in his sweeping discourse.
The assumption Cameron makes is that by reducing immigration the gaps in the labour market will be filled by Britons. But will they? Ask any business chief why they employ foreign staff and they will reply that they are more disciplined, more presentable and more reliable. The suggestion from the Prime Minister is that non-Britons are taking the jobs of locals. But while state handouts are readily available there is no incentive for many of them to seek employment.
In the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, there was one telling set: in the last three months of 2010, the total number of UK citizens in employment rose by 39,000; non-UK went up by 173,000. The rate of Britons looking for work, and securing it, is far lower than for non-Britons.
There's a strong case for distancing London from the debate. There are sections of the South-East, it's true, where integration is almost non-existent. However, compared with some other towns and cities, that divisiveness is not an over-riding concern.
London has long relied on the influx of overseas workers. Indeed its melting-pot nature is an abiding strength. And crucially, one of the reasons why it has climbed to the top of the ranking of world commercial centres.
The number of people employed in the City who were not born in the UK, for example, is incalculable. It runs easily into tens of thousands. To threaten that hegemony, even with inflammatory sentiment, when the economy as a whole is extremely fragile, surely makes little sense.
