Job scheme

Chris Grayling’s job is to make sure that British people can get jobs. But he faces a problem. Since the election, 90 per cent of the rise in employment is accounted for by foreign-born workers. As Employment Minister, Grayling is painfully aware that there is a very large difference between importing workers and creating jobs.

When we meet in his sparsely decorated ministerial office, he is frank about the scale of the problem. ‘There is no doubt,’ he says, ‘that a young person coming out of school, college or university without the experience [of work] is at a disadvantage compared to someone coming into the UK from overseas.’

To ram home the point about the challenges that are faced by young British ­people entering the jobs market, Grayling points out that ‘Employers may well be looking at a choice between a young British unemployed person, who may not yet have experience under their belt, and somebody from eastern Europe in his mid-twenties with previous experience and the get-up-and-go to move across the continent.