Government urges employers to give British youth a chance

Friday, 01 July 2011 11:23

Iain Duncan Smith has urged UK employers to recruit more young unemployed Britons as opposed to individuals from abroad.

In a speech he will make in Spain, Mr Duncan Smith is expected to say that the government has trained young people to make them ready for work and that businesses need to give them a chance to avoid them being lost to dependency.

However, business leaders have countered that overseas migrants are often selected over UK born young people because they have a better work ethic and higher level of skills.

David Frost, Director General of the British Chamber of Commerce speaking about why employers find immigrants better employees in some instances said: "They expect young people to come forward to them who are able to read, write, communicate and have a strong work ethic and too often that's not the case. And there's a stream of highly able eastern European migrants who are able to take those jobs and that's why they're taking them on."

Most people from the 27 EU member states are allowed to work in the UK. The government also imposes restrictions on non-EU workers and the number of skilled workers from outside of the EU who are allowed to work in the UK in a bid to reduce net immigration into the UK.

Mr Duncan Smith is expected to warn the UK that more than half of the jobs created in the UK over the last year have gone to foreigners and that if this doesn’t change we risk leaving many young British people out of work and lost to hopelessness and dependency. He will call for UK businesses to give young Britons a chance and not fall back on labour from overseas.

Unemployment has fallen amongst those aged 16-24 in the three months to April 2011. It fell by 79,000 to 895,000. However, youth unemployment still stands at more than 19 per cent.

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