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Home Secretary Amber Rudd has said UK-based businesses like Pret A Manger must hire more British workers and stop relying on European members of staff.

Mrs Rudd said the Government will “push” businesses - including the popular food retailer – to hire unemployed British workers and train them up.

In an interview she said that they would no longer be able to rely on staff from European Union members post-Brexit.

She told BBC show Pienaar’s Politics: “I did hear that Pret A Manger had come out and said ‘it’s absolutely essential for us to have European workers because if we don’t, we are going to have to make more of an effort to recruit in the U.K.’ Well, good.

“We will be trying to push them as well to do more in the U.K. - them and all other businesses - so that we make sure we look after people who are otherwise unemployed.”

Her comments were in response to a warning issued by Pret bosses back in March.

The chain’s HR chief Andrea Wareham told the Economic Affairs Committee the company faced a staffing crisis because of Brexit and claimed it was because British people did not want to work there.

She said: “I would say that one in 50 people that apply to our company to work is British.

“If I had to fill all our vacancies in British-only applicants I would not be able to fill them... because of a lack of applications.”

The high-street coffee shop is staffed with people from 110 different countries - with 65 per cent of those from outside the UK being EU citizens.

In the same interview on Sunday, Ms Rudd said she wanted to "continue to bring immigration down" and the party’s manifesto is expected to set out plans to cut net migration to “tens of thousands”

The ambitious pledge was in the Tories’ manifestos for both the 2010 and 2015 elections, but was not met.