The number of foreign workers has risen above two million for the first time in Britain, which recently proposed tightening of immigration rules for people from India and other non-EU countries.
According to new figures from the Labour Force Survey published on Monday, there has been a 75 per cent increase in workers from abroad in the last six years.
During a recent visit to India, Immigration Minister Liam Byrne announced the introduction of a points-based system, and restrictions on employing doctors in the National Health Service from India.
According to the survey, the number of British employees has dropped by half a million. The figures show that the number of foreigners in the UK workforce increased between 2001 and last year by 8,64,000, amounting to a total number of foreigners to just over two million people. This is equivalent to one in 14 of a total working population.
The rise is attributed to the migration of hundreds of thousands of people from Eastern European countries into the UK, since 2004 after the countries joined the expanded European Union.
The latest figures were contained in a letter from Karen Dunnell, the national statistician and director of the Office for National Statistics, to the Conservative MP James Clappison, a member of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee who accused the government of neglecting domestic workers.
"The Government has overseen a significant increase in the employment of foreign citizens but have had much less success in creating jobs for British citizens," he said. The Department of Work and Pensions attributed the decline in UK workforce to "demographic changes."
