Miriam Cates found herself in a clash with BBC Presenter Mishal Hussain over the New Conservatives’ bid to slash migration numbers.
The group of MPs has called for the Prime Minister to deliver on the 2019 manifesto and cut net migration figures.
Appearing on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme, Ms Cates said care home bosses should employ “local young people” instead of relying on foreign labour.
But Ms Hussain said: “There are residential care homes which simply would not be able to say to hospitals ‘we are ready, we have the beds, you can discharge people’ if they weren’t recruiting from overseas.”
Hitting back, the MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge said: “But we have five million people economically inactive in this country …”
The BBC presenter responded: “But they don’t want to work in care, so who does those jobs?”
In response, Ms Cates said: “Well they’re not going to work in care until we make the pay and conditions good enough, and the only way we’re going to do that is to cut off the supply of cheap labour from abroad.”
The New Conservative Group has put forward an alternative manifesto to cut migration, expected to be published around 1pm today.
This comes amid growing anger over the rising net migration figures, which have reached 606,000 – more than six times the level the Conservatives promised.
The figures are an increase from pre-Brexit immigration levels, with most of the migrants coming from non-EU countries.
In 2019, net migration stood at 226,000.
The plan to slash migration has been backed by a number of red wall MPs, including Lee Anderson, Tom Hunt and Danny Kruger.
MORE TO COME…
