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Brown calms fears over loss of jobs to India

LONDON: Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Monday sought to calm fears over loss of British jobs to India and China telling workers not to panic and assuring them that the government was behind them.

In a measure, designed to protect British jobs as well as to restrict immigration, Mr. Brown announced that workers from outside the European Union would now be required to demonstrate a knowledge of English before they were allowed to come to Britain.

In his first speech as Prime Minister to the militant Labour-affiliated Trade Union Congress (TUC) in Brighton , Mr. Brown also unveiled a plan to create 5,00,000 jobs to achieve the dream of “a British job for every British worker”.

But concerns that British jobs were being taken away by foreigners remained with critics dismissing Mr. Brown’s assurances as “headline-grabbing” rhetoric.

Chris Grayling, Conservative shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, said the vast majority of jobs created in Britain since 1997 had gone to “people moving into the UK from other countries”.

“The reality is that one in five households in Britain is workless and youth unemployment is higher than it was 10 years ago. Mr. Brown’s claims about a British job for every British worker are all about grabbing the headlines and bear no relation to what’s really going on in Britain today.”

Mr. Brown acknowledged the challenge to British economy from India and China. These two countries, he said, were already producing more graduates than Europe and America put together and their workforce was becoming increasingly sophisticated. The changes in the global economy were a “wake-up call for us”, he said. Mr. Brown’s message to workers was not to get bogged down in the “race to the bottom” but to improve their skills to compete for “high-quality” and better-paid jobs. Striking an upbeat note, he said it was generally thought that the 21st century would be China’s but he believed that with a little effort “we can make it Britain’s”.

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