I want to address an issue that has not been covered today—I had hoped to address it when we discussed the new clauses tabled by my party. It is the issue of migrant workers who are legitimately in this country. A number of them were discovered at the former Swan Hunter site at Wallsend. They were living there in unsafe conditions. I pursued the issue and discovered that a local engineering company had hired them through an employment agency in Romania. It was a legitimate situation, because, under the law, temporary workers are allowed to work for a number of months in this country. However, what I did unearth, via the UK Border Agency, was that some of those workers were on permanent contract.
I inquired at the jobcentre whether the jobs, which the company maintained they could not fill with local workers, could have been taken by welders. Everyone knows that the north-east, especially an area such as mine, is awash with people who have welding skills and who were employed in the former heavy industries. The jobcentre confirmed that there were in fact more than enough unemployed workers who could take the jobs. Not only were these east European workers living in unsafe conditions, but they were probably being paid less than the minimum wage and the going rate for that job.
Subsequently, the building in which the workers were living was brought up to scratch. After speaking to the employment agency in Romania about the workers on permanent contracts who should not have been here, the UK Border Agency allowed it to change the contracts
to temporary contracts. Although people in Wallsend felt sorry for those workers who were living in such bad conditions, they were upset that they were coming over and being paid less for the work than skilled people in the area. I am sorry that we were not able to discuss those issues further or the new clauses proposed by those on the Labour Front Bench.
4.57 pm