Labour

Diane Abbott MP, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary welcomed the Government’s commissioning of a report on the role of EU nationals in the UK economy and society and said:

“There is far too much heat and not enough light about immigration, so any truly objective and well-informed analysis must be welcome.

“We already know that immigrants, both EU and non-EU, make a huge contribution to the economy and to wider society. They occupy both high-skilled, high-wage jobs and lower-skilled, lower paid ones, adding value across a wide range of economic sectors. They help make the UK more internationally competitive, and sectors with staff shortages, such as the NHS, social care and agriculture, would be in serious difficulty without them.

“The report should be published. There must be no repeat of the buried Home Office reports into international students, or the Saudi funding of terrorism. And there should be no attempt to reform the immigration system until the report has been published and debated.”

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Keir Starmer MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, speaking at a Labour in the City event this evening, said:

“Labour’s objective is tariff free access to the single market, no new red tape at customs and a deal that works for services as well as goods. It is vital that we retain the benefits of the single market and the customs union. How we achieve that  is secondary to the outcome and should be part of the negotiations. We need to be flexible in our approach and not sweep options off the table.”

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Barbara Keeley MP, Labour’s Shadow Social Care Minister, commenting on the Government’s decision to temporarily suspend HMRC enforcement action and waive historical penalties for sleep-in shifts, said:

“This announcement does little to help sort out the issue of pay for sleep-in shifts.

“Care providers still face a £400 million bill and care workers still have no idea when they will get the money they have rightfully earned. Delaying enforcement action for a few weeks does nothing to address the issue and is a dangerous and retrograde step that risks undermining the very principle of a statutory minimum wage. If an exemption is granted in this case, it will not be long before other employers start pleading poverty to get out of their duty to properly pay their workforce.

“This Tory Government needs to stop burying its head in the sand about the problems in social care and put the funding of social care on a long-term sustainable footing.”

Alex Cunningham, Shadow Work and Pensions Minister, commenting on the Rethink Mental Illness report, said:

“This report highlights the shocking barriers faced by people with mental health conditions trying to find a job, and demonstrates this Government’s total failure to get to grips with the disability employment gap.

“The Government’s flagship Disability Confident scheme doesn’t appear to have had any impact at all. They seem unable to point to a single person who has found a job as a direct result of the scheme.”

“Labour will halve the disability employment gap, by supporting employers to remove barriers to work and retain employees who may have developed a long-term health condition or an impairment.”

Andrew Gwynne MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, responding to the announcement of the terms of reference for the Grenfell Taskforce, said:

“Today’s announcement has come too slow and falls far short of the action that is needed. Residents of Kensington and Chelsea have made it very clear in the past weeks that they do not trust the leadership of the council, and nothing from central government has been done to address this.

“The objectives set by the Government for the taskforce show that they are aware of these problems – but there continues to be a real issue of accountability. Delivery of these objectives remains the responsibility of a council that have shown they are not equipped to deal with the task ahead, and Sajid Javid has refused to step in and take on the responsibility himself to ensure that survivors, still homeless after this tragedy, get the support they need.”

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