The government has abandoned plans to force businesses to reveal how many foreign staff they employ following widespread condemnation and accusations that the policy was akin to “tattooing workers with numbers on their forearms”.
Justine Greening, the education secretary, announced yesterday that companies will not be forced to publish the data as suggested by the home secretary, Amber Rudd, during the Conservative party conference.
She said the information would be confidential and instead used by the government to identify skills shortages rather than to “name and shame” businesses that rely on foreign employees.
Rudd unveiled plans to force companies to reveal how many foreign staff they employ last week to a chorus of disapproval. She warned that foreign workers should not be able to “take the jobs that British people should do” and announced plans to make companies publish the proportion of “international staff on their books”. But in an apparent U-turn on the policy, Greening told ITV’s Peston on Sunday: “This is not data that will be published. There will be absolutely no naming and shaming.
“This is about informing policy so that we understand which areas and parts of the country there are skills shortages evidenced by the fact that employers are not taking local workers as much as they might do. It then enables us really to tailor policy in those areas so we can respond to that.”
Craig Oliver, David Cameron’s former adviser, speaking on the same programme, described the announcement that the data will no longer be made public as a “managed retreat”.
Greening’s comments were echoed by the Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, who told BBC Radio 5Live he could “absolutely rule out” asking companies to list, name, publish or identify in any way the number of foreign workers they have.
It comes after Steve Hilton, a former adviser to David Cameron, suggested that ministers might as well announce that “foreign workers will be tattooed with numbers on their forearms”. Writing in the Sunday Times, he condemned the policy as repugnant and divisive.
Nicky Morgan, the former education secretary, agreed with Hilton’s description of the plan. “I was very surprised that Amber had put forward that proposal about the listing of foreign workers because that’s not the Rudd I know and I’ve worked alongside ... The trouble with these sorts of policies is they send out a message about the party,” she told Sky News’ Murnaghan programme.
The government had announced plans for a consultation that would require employers to “set out the steps they have taken to foster a pool of local candidates, set out the impact on the local labour force of their foreign recruitment and be clear about the proportion of their workforce which is international, as is the case in the US”.
The plans to publish foreign worker numbers will now not not be included in the consultation.
Defending her speech and the proposals last week, Rudd did not make it explicit that the information would not be published. She said: “I am very aware about the language and when I looked at the speech and thought how I would present it.
“We should be able to have a conversation about the skills we need.”