Justine Greening says data will not be used to ‘name and shame’ businesses, after proposal was roundly criticised

The government has abandoned plans to force businesses to reveal how many foreign staff they employ, following widespread condemnation and accusations that the policy was akin to tattooing workers “with numbers on their forearms”.

Justine Greening, the education secretary, announced on Sunday that companies will not be made to publish the data as suggested by the home secretary, Amber Rudd, during the Conservative party conference.

She said the information would be confidential and instead used by the government to identify skills shortages, rather than to “name and shame” businesses that rely on foreign employees.



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Last week, Rudd unveiled plans to force companies to reveal how many foreign staff they employ, to a chorus of disapproval. She said foreign workers should not be able to “take the jobs that British people should do” and announced proposals to make companies publish the proportion of “international staff on their books”.

However, in an apparent U-turn on the policy, Greening told ITV’s Peston on Sunday: “This is not data that will be published. There will be absolutely no naming and shaming.

“This is about informing policy so that we understand which areas and parts of the country there are skills shortages, evidenced by the fact that employers are not taking local workers as much as they might do. It then enables us really to tailor policy in those areas so we can respond to that.”

David Cameron’s former communications director Craig Oliver, speaking on the same programme, described the announcement that the data will no longer be made public as a “managed retreat”.

Greening’s comments were echoed by the defence secretary, Michael Fallon, who told BBC Radio 5 Live he could “absolutely rule out” asking companies to list, name, publish or identify in any way the number of foreign workers they have.

It came after Steve Hilton, a former adviser to Cameron, had suggested that ministers might as well announce that “foreign workers will be tattooed with numbers on their forearms”. Writing in the Sunday Times, he condemned the policy as repugnant and divisive.

The former education secretary Nicky Morgan agreed with Hilton’s description of the plan. “I was very surprised that Amber had put forward that proposal about the listing of foreign workers, because that’s not the Amber Rudd I know and I’ve worked alongside ... The trouble with these sorts of policies is they send out a message about the party,” she told Sky News’ Murnaghan programme.

The government had announced a planned consultation that would require employers to “set out the steps they have taken to foster a pool of local candidates, set out the impact on the local labour force of their foreign recruitment and be clear about the proportion of their workforce which is international, as is the case in the US”.

The plans to publish foreign worker numbers will not be included in the consultation.

Defending her speech and the proposals last week, Rudd did not explicitly say the information would not be published. “I am very aware about the language and when I looked at the speech and thought how I would present it,” she said.

“We should be able to have a conversation about the skills we need. I don’t think we should have a situation where we can’t talk about immigration. We must not ignore the fact that people want to talk about immigration, and if we do talk about immigration, don’t call me a racist.”

Reacting to the change in policy, Diane Abbott, Labour’s shadow home secretary since Thursday, said: “The Tories are in disarray following Amber Rudd’s worrying statement last week, contradicting each other as their policy falls apart at the seams.

“The Tories’ anti-foreigner agenda is a distraction from their own complete failures of policy, and against the best interests of society. Many sectors risk collapse if the Tories press ahead with these plans on overseas workers: the city, farmers, the NHS, construction.

“We need answers from the Tories on how they will protect our economy, but they have no plan other than a risky hard Brexit which would threaten our prosperity.”