We need EU workers, says former minister
BRITAIN must continue to allow free movement of people from the EU to protect the economy, a prominent Tory MP said yesterday.
Ex-business minister Anna Soubry said UK firms could not survive without migrants from Europe.
‘I am concerned about any plans to somehow curb immigration,’ she told BBC Radio 4’s Today pro- gramme. ‘We have not had a proper debate about immigration. ‘It has benefited our country – especially businesses. Go and talk to those businesses, whether it’s people who are picking fruit, whether it’s people who are relying on highly qualified engineers or other experts working in British business. British business could not
survive without access to that free movement of labour.’
Miss Soubry, who lost her job in Theresa May’s reshuffle, is a leading light in new cross-party pressure group Open Britain.
Former chancellor Lord Lawson said it was clear Miss Soubry did not accept the people’s verdict on Brexit. ‘She says she accepts it, but it is clear from what she says that she does not,’ the Tory peer said.
‘The British people voted clearly to leave the European Union. And they voted in part, but an important part, to abandon, to get away from, the doctrine of the free movement of people.’
Tory MP Peter Bone said she was ‘out of step with the British public’.