Britain is locked in a “Ponzi scheme” and will “break” if the government fails to tackle mass migration, it was claimed.
Reform UK board member Gawain Towler said everyone knows that the UK is heading for bankruptcy but admitted sorting out the issues the country is facing won’t be “easy or nice”. But he said the party’s new policy on introducing strictly limited visas for critical roles reliant on foreign labour is a crucial part of the solution.
Employers would have to pay a levy for training Britons. Speaking on the Daily Expresso, our weekday news show on YouTube, Towler questioned why UK citizens should be funding welfare for people from overseas and he said the era of importing cheap labour from other countries must end.
He said: “But the other thing I think in the acute workers and visa scheme that is extremely interesting and valuable is that if you wish to take advantage of it as an employer, then you also have to pay into levy to train up a British citizen to be able to do that job.
“Because we have become an almost Ponzi scheme in that we bring in cheap, cheaper labour. You’ve got vast areas of the economy where the minimum wage has become the maximum wage, because employers can get to where you live.
“If it means we have to pay people a little bit better, that’s not a bad thing. That really isn’t a bad thing, I think we should be encouraged.”
Towler said employing Britons on a higher rate of pay is “not a bad thing” and the country should be training up people to do jobs such as nursing instead of recruiting from abroad.
He added: “We look at it as a question of fairness. We look at it as a question of economic fairness. We are going bankrupt. We are going bankrupt as a nation. You know that, I know that everybody knows that, so therefore we can’t continue spending this vast sum of money. “Something will break, and I don’t want our country to break.”
The visa policy was unveiled as part of Nigel Farage’s new “prioritising UK citizen” plan. It includes axing the right of migrants to apply for indefinite leave to remain which would stop foreign nationals having widespread access to benefits.
Mr Farage said the immigration figures under the Conservative governments since 2010 had “betrayed democracy”. “Far too many that have come don’t work, have never worked and never will work,” he said.
“The ability to bring dependents of all kinds, and when you realise that most that come are very low-skilled, and on very low wages, you start to get a very, very different picture. In fact, you start to get a massive benefits bill.”
He said: “In particular, what we’re focusing on this morning is the ‘Boris wave’. The Boris wave, after his huge victory in 2019.
“And I think the millions that came in the years of his premiership, represents the greatest betrayal of democratic wishes certainly in anyone’s living memory. This is not what Brexit voters wanted, and it’s certainly not what any Conservative voter wanted from 2010 onwards.”