Miliband sets out 5 point immigration reform plan (but won’t join “Operation Pander”)

Ed Miliband is in Rochester today, where he’s campaigning for the party’s by-election candidate Naushabah Khan against what he called the “two Tory opponents” of UKIP and the Tories in the Rochester and Strood by-election.

But the main purpose of Miliband’s speech was to set out what Labour’s approach to immigration will be – specifically an Immigration Reform Bill in the first Queen’s Speech of the new Parliament. Miliband announced it’d be based around five key principles (most of which has been announced by Miliband over the past four years):

1. “Action to ensure that when people cross our borders they are counted – in and out – so we know who is here, who has gone home and who has stayed so we can deal with illegal immigration.”

2. “Introduce a law to make it a criminal offence to exploit workers, wherever they come from, with the aim of illegally undercutting wages or conditions here.”

3. “Tackle specific problems, for example, introducing laws preventing recruitment agencies hiring only from abroad and those that allow them to exploit loopholes to undercut directly employed staff.”

4. “Make sure opportunities are available for our young people here…a Labour government will require any large employer who hires a skilled worker from outside the EU to train apprentices here.”

5. “People also want to know that when people come here, they will play a full part in our society. It’s good for all of us… a Labour government would ensure that public sector workers in public-facing roles have minimum standards of English.”

Miliband was aiming to stake out an authentically Labour position on immigration – one that acknowledges the concerns that Labour activists face time and again on the doorstep about jobs, scarcity of resources and the changing nature of their communities, without falling victim to “operation pander” whereby Labour attempts to inauthentically ape the Tories, UKIP or anyone else in a bid to be ‘tough on immigration’. That’s why Miliband has largely focussed on Labour market reforms that protect British jobs but also protect immigrant workers from exploitation too.

At the same time, the Labour leader knows that getting into a Dutch auction on immigration promises only leads to a rise in distrust when (as with Cameron) these promises aren’t kept. Cameron said he’d reduce net immigration to “tens of thousands”. That’s not a promise that’s acheiveable without Britain turning insular, closing our doors to the world and becoming an altogether smaller and more unpleasant nation. It’s to Miliband’s credit that whilst he’s rightly willing to take concerns about immigration head on – he’s unwilling to follow Cameron, Farage – or some on the Labour benches – down that particular rabbit hole.