Labour has clashed with supermarket giant Tesco over claims made by a senior MP about recruiting foreign workers.
Shadow immigration minister Chris Bryant is to highlight the activities of Tesco in a speech attacking "unscrupulous employers" who recruit cheap labour from Eastern Europe.
In a speech today he will claim the supermarket moved its distribution centre to Kent where a "large percentage" of the staff are from the eastern bloc, it was reported.
But the supermarket denied having a distribution centre in the county and it is understood the firm will write to Labour to complain about the "unfair" attack.
According to extracts of the speech, Mr Bryant will acknowledge that immigration can have a negative effect on labour markets.
He will say: "The biggest complaint I have heard, from migrants and settled communities alike, is about the negative effects migration can have on the UK labour market. And I agree."
In his speech, which as well as targeting Tesco also contains criticism of high street chain Next, Mr Bryant will make it clear that neither firm has broken the law.
Tesco said it had recruited 350 local people to work in its distribution centre in Dagenham, which is in the east London Borough of Barking and Dagenham and was formerly in Essex, not Kent, and works incredibly hard to recruit from the local area.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article