Yesterday Matthew Hancock MP who is a Minister in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Nigel Farage MEP got into a bit of a scuffle over employment rights as the BBC reported here. The comments relate to the importance of employing local people before businesses recruit overseas workers. This is my take on their argument and the real issues that lie behind it, and where they should be focused.

Clearly both men want their parties to do well at the next election, they are politicians after all and if they can improve their own ratings, so much the better. They need to pass a few comments that will catch the attention of the media and ultimately win some votes. This issue is one that plays well to those who have been persuaded that they would have a better job or be better paid if it wasn’t for foreign workers. Never mind that many people would have a lower quality of life if it weren’t for the foreign workers who help the economy and society to work as it does. Neither Hancock or Farage are stupid enough to think that a Politician speaking about such things will change the mind of a single employer in deciding who to employ. Indeed it would be a strange world where that did happen. This is as likely to succeed as the vans currently circulating London asking illegal immigrants to give themselves up.

Matthew Hancock like the rest of the Conservative front bench wants to outdo UKIP in sounding tough on EU immigration and so he has brought an old Brownian policy out of the wardrobe and dusted it down. British Jobs for British workers has a great ring to it, but it is not something that a Politician has any influence on, unless the jobs concerned are in party headquarters. Nigel who is sharp as a tack spotted Matthew on what he considers to be his home ground and he has rushed over to get his ball back. The challenge for Nigel is that he can’t possibly keep up with all of the Tory front bench now that Parliament is in recess and the country is being managed on auto pilot. The problem with the policy is that it looks like protectionism which is what it is and it is based on a micromanagement approach that suggests that the Government which is barely able to keep the pulse going on the economy is capable of overseeing every business in the UK. It avoids discussing issues such as training which is a matter that the Government has responsibility for and places an expectation in the public domain that business are responsible for locking down the British borders.

My view is that Matthew is trying to divert us from the real issue which is that the Government is falling a long way behind its own commitments enshrined in The Social Value Act (2012) which places a statutory requirement on public authorities to pay regard to economic, social and environmental well being with its public service contracts. In addition the efforts by his colleague Francis Maude to ensure that small to medium sized local businesses win at least 25% of Government contracts has failed in the definition of these businesses. The definition applied by the Government is that a medium sized businesses can be as large as to employ 250 employees which is not what most people would describe as a medium sized business. If Hancock and Maude were to ensure that small local businesses and voluntary sector organisations were much more successful in winning contracts with public sector agencies, these organisations would in turn ensure that local jobs and suppliers would be strengthened. On the downside it would not attract as many column inches, but it is time our Politicians started to deliver on something they can do, rather than simply demanding more of other people in the hope they get points for sounding tough. All the while Matthew Hancock is asking business to employ local people, the Government is awarding large contracts to multinational companies who have no connection with local communities and so will employ staff at the lowest rate from wherever they are available. It is in Government procurement that he needs to focus, not diverting attention onto who the private sector is recruiting.