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Ed Balls urges EU immigration cap

Press Association
Sunday 06 June 2010 09:59 BST
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Shadow cabinet minister Ed Balls has admitted high levels of immigration under Labour had affected the pay and conditions of "too many people".

Mr Balls insisted the party he hopes to lead had to acknowledge its mistakes and called for better protection for British workers under any future expansion of the European Union.

His intervention went further than ministers from the last government have so far gone in acknowledging public anger about immigration from Eastern Europe.

The issue is thought to have cost Labour many votes among its traditional working class supporters in the May 6 general election.

A close ally of Gordon Brown throughout Labour's 13 years in power, Mr Balls is now campaigning to take over from his political mentor as party leader.

In an article for The Observer, Mr Balls stressed that he was a "strong pro-European", but added that he was "of the hard-headed rather than romantic variety".

"There have been real economic gains from the arrival of young, hard-working migrants from eastern Europe over the past six years," he said. "But there has also been a direct impact on the wages, terms and conditions of too many people - in communities ill-prepared to deal with the reality of globalisation, including the one I represent."

Mr Balls also admitted that the points-based system the last government introduced had no impact on EU immigration. He went on: "As Labour seeks to rebuild trust with the British people, it is important we are honest about what we got wrong."

That included failing to impose transitional controls on immigration from the 2004 EU accession states or implementing the agency workers directive, he said.

Mr Balls urged that Turkey's proposed accession to the EU could "only be made to work" if restrictions on the movement of unskilled Turkish labour remained in place for "an extended transition period". He said there should also be a debate about what labour protections and restrictions on unskilled labour mobility were needed in an enlarging Europe.

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