BY JEREMY CORBYN
Immigrants haven’t hurt housing and NHS – but the Tories have
OVER the last couple of months I have travelled thousands of miles across our country making the Labour case to stay in Europe. From the beautiful beaches of Cornwall to Britain’s oil and gas capital, Aberdeen, this weekend.
Today’s Sunday Mirror poll shows most people think politicians haven’t done a good job getting their view across in this campaign. So let me make my view clear.
I have seen first-hand the jobs, investment, workers’ rights and environmental protection that being part of the EU helps secure for working people.
That’s why, despite its faults, I believe it’s best we vote to stay and work with our friends to make the changes Europe needs.
One issue many people have raised with me during the campaign is about EU migration. Living in one of the most diverse areas of the country I know both the benefits and the difficulties immigration can cause.
Parties like UKIP want to whip up division and turn this into a referendum on immigration.
But our hospitals, schools and housing aren’t in crisis because of migration. It’s not Polish plumbers or Spanish nurses who created record waiting times at A&E departments, or made cancer treatment waiting times longer.
It was cuts forced through by David Cameron, Boris Johnson and the Tory party that did that. Instead of training enough doctors and nurses, we now rely on over 50,000 medical staff from the EU to keep our NHS going.
If you or your family are struggling to get an affordable home, it’s not migrants who are to blame. It’s politicians who have failed to build enough homes.
Under David Cameron’s Government new house builds have fallen to their lowest level since the 1920s.
If your son or daughter is in an oversized class at school, ask Michael Gove, former education secretary, why his Government is making the deepest cuts to the education budget since the 1970s.
Our public services are reeling from the impact of six years of Tory cuts, which have damaged our economy in the process.
Over a million Britons also live and work elsewhere in Europe. But there’s no doubt that migration can cause communities to change rapidly – and put an added strain on local services.
That’s why Labour backs a Migrant Impact Fund – a national fund to manage the effect of migration on local communities, scrapped by the Tories. That would mean support for extra GPs and more classroom assistants.
We also want to see decisive action against unscrupulous employers who exploit migrant workers to undercut wages in Britain. But Cameron’s Government is refusing to agree to close loopholes in the EU Posting of Workers’ Directive that make that possible.
It’s this Government that has undermined services and living standards.
That’s why I believe it’s in our best interests to vote to remain and reform, protecting rights and jobs, on June 23 – and to vote Labour whenever the next election is called.