Green MEP Jean Lambert speaks out against the “xenophobic” UKIP campaign, instead calling for the UK to be “at the heart of the EU” to work towards ensuring equal rights and a living wage.
London’s Green MEP Jean Lambert has pointed to the chasm between UKIP claiming to defend British workers jobs, while doing nothing to defend their rights at work.
Speaking on the BBC today, she said: “Today an anti-EU poster campaign has been launched, suggesting that UK jobs are under threat from EU migrants.
“There is no fixed number of jobs so it is misleading to assume that a British worker loses out every time a non-UK national gets a job. We should also not assume that every vacant job has a local applicant with the necessary skills.
“We should be ensuring everyone in work has the same rights and earns a living wage. UKIP has not once defended workers’ rights in the European Parliament and frequently speaks of such rights – to control working time, to parental leave, to equal treatment – as “barriers to business”.
“These posters represent crocodile tears for British workers.”
She added: “This xenophobic campaign is just nasty: it is anti-foreigner and leaves many EU migrants – that’s more than a million people in London alone, and British citizens from diverse backgrounds, wondering whether they should be here at all.
“The Green Party believes the UK should be at the heart of the EU, with a prime seat at the decision-making table: not only to boost employment and workers’ rights, but to ensure we influence EU standards on air quality, its responses to climate change and that the UK has a voice on key decisions about how and where we get our energy from in future.”