No Scape-goating

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) general secretary Frances O’Grady has launched a fresh attack on Theresa May’s proposed crackdown on EU migrants, saying that it would damage Brexit talks and scapegoat the vulnerable. 

“The problem is that weak politicians like using migrants and other vulnerable people as human shields for their own failings...I’m always worried when politicians of any party in any country look to scapegoat the most vulnerable for their own failings,” she said. “Nobody is nicking jobs.” 

O’Grady said it was true that some communities “are worried about the lack of council homes, particularly for their grown up children. They are worried about what happens to their pay packets and they are worried about a living standards squeeze.” However, these problems, she argued, were the fault of the UK Government and not of migrants. 

O’Grady was speaking as her organisation released the results of a survey showing that a shocking one in eight workers are skipping meals to make ends meet, while one in four wouldn’t be able to cope with an unexpected £500 bill and one in six go without heating in the cold.   The survey also found close to half (44 per cent) are worried about meeting basic household expenses such as food, transport and energy, while more than a third (36 per cent) think cost of living pressures are increasing. 

She added: “The working poor is becoming a very big group. More and more people are stuck with more and more unsecured household debt, and some of us remember that if you simply transfer the banks’ debt to private households they are not going to be spending in shops or businesses locally. They are going to ratchet up more and more debt. They are living beyond their means because their means are not good enough.”