The chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission has warned that the jobs downturn could hit the ‘white underclass’ hardest
29 October 2008
White working-class people should be given extra help to find jobs to prevent them losing out to migrants in an economic recession, the head of the UK’s equalities watchdog has warned.
Trevor Phillips, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said that “positive action” should be taken to help those hit hardest in the downturn, particularly white working-class people. While previously ethnic minority groups and women have been worst hit by economic downturns, today in some parts of the country “the colour of disadvantage isn’t black or brown, it is white”, he said.
Speaking at a CBI summit on migration, Phillips said making this “white underclass” competitive in terms of skills and jobs was the best defence against their potential prejudices against immigrants.
“We may need to do so with the sort of special measures we’ve previously targeted at ethnic minorities. We are going to have to put extra resources where young people can’t compete with migrant skills,” he said. The special measures might include extra help with training or education, he added.
Phillips also told business leaders that the current exodus of migrants from the UK, because of the drying up of jobs, amounted to an “exporting of unemployment”.
If migrant workers were not returning home, Britain would be facing the prospect of 3 million unemployed, rather than the 2 million by Christmas that economists are currently forecasting, he said.
Phillips argued against suggestions that the UK population should be capped at 70 million, saying that such a limit was “wrong and unenforceable”.
He said the UK was not “full”, but needed migration to be better spread around.