Dr Scott Blinder evaluates Ed Milibands speech on immigration

Scott Blinder was interviewed by Shelagh Fogarty on BBC Radio 5 Live (22 June) concerning Ed Milibands recent speech in which he distanced himself from Labours previous immigration policies.

Mr Miliband outlined 4 distinct areas where he saw a need for improvement :

(i) effective controls on immigration, (ii) protection of wages from employer exploitation, (iii) a more open recruitment policy, and (iv) 'responsible capitalism' from the employers of imigrant workers.

Scott said that these were different concerns to the policy innovations that Oxford's Migration Observatory has been looking at lately, but the second and the fourth points are big issues that do need to be brought into the discussion.

He added that "a lot of people are fairly satisfied with their local areas but still concerned about immigration as a national level issue".

The full programme can be heard here [c.8 mins on clock - expires Fri, 29 Jun 2012].