Cameron: 'Migrants Take Jobs Our Young Cannot Do'

David Cameron has said it is time to say "no" to immigrants taking jobs in British factories and start educating children so they have the skills to be employed instead.

The Prime Minister said that in some factories across the country half the work was done by migrants from Eastern Europe.

But he said that they could not be blamed for seeking jobs in British factories when schools and colleges were not producing students with the required skills to do the work and the jobs were there for the taking.

Speaking at the Mini plant in Oxfordshire as he launched a new and tougher apprenticeship scheme, Mr Cameron said: "You can go to factories in our country where half the people come from Poland, Lithuania or Latvia.

"You can't blame them, they want to work, they see the jobs, they come over and they do them.

"But as a country what we ought to be saying is 'No, let's get our education system right so we are producing young people out of our schools and colleges who are fully capable of doing those jobs'."

He said that the welfare system required reform so it "does not pay to be out of work" and immigration needed to be restricted.

Mr Cameron said: "Let's have sensible controls on immigration, particularly from outside the EU where we can cap the number of people who come."

Linking education, welfare reform and immigration, he said: "Crack those three problems together and we can really get an economy that generates wealth for our people."

Mr Cameron was visiting the Mini factory at Cowley near Oxford

Mr Cameron was introducing a new year-long scheme which have been designed to deliver high quality training alongside a tougher academic assessment.

He also announced 100,000 vocational training schemes for young people over the next two years, modelled on programmes run by the Prince's Trust.

More than 60 firms, including Mini owners BMW, BAE Systems, Microsoft and Barclays Bank, have signed up to deliver the new apprenticeship schemes.

Mr Cameron, who studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford, also hit out at "snobbery" aimed at certain degree courses such as music studies or golf course management.

He said: "What's happened with degrees is, because we are asking students to make a bigger contribution in terms of fees and paying them back over their lives, I think students are getting more fussy about what it is they are putting themselves in for."

UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage said: "Cameron is once again looking to pull the wool over the eyes of the British public.

"He has finally acknowledged the damage that unrestricted Eastern European immigration has had on the prospects of British workers, especially our youngsters.

"Yet this is the same Prime Minister who supports Turkish membership of the EU and the open borders that come with it.

"The rise of Ukip may have prompted David Cameron into talking about immigration but whilst we remain in the EU, talk is all we can do."produce young people with proper skills.

SKY