By ANDY DOLAN

Last updated at 16:51 19 June 2007

British job- seekers are being refused work because they do not speak Polish, it has been claimed.

The influx of Eastern European workers means the language is now vital for jobs in agriculture, says MP Malcolm Moss.

His North East Cambridgeshire constituency has seen the arrival of a huge number of migrant workers to pick fruit and vegetables, as well as fill other low-paid jobs in packing and food processing plants.

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Many of the farms and companies involved rely on local job agencies or gangmasters to supply workers.

Mr Moss told yesterday how a constituent had been denied work at one factory because she did not speak Polish.

"A woman came to my surgery to tell me about her daughter's experience when she was looking for work," he said.

"The daughter was aged 18 or 19 and had been to the job centre, where there was little work.

"Instead she was told to try the local factories in person.

"They, in turn told her they did not recruit directly and referred her on to a gangmaster who held the contract to supply the staff."

Mr Moss added: "This particular gangmaster told the woman, 'If you don't speak Polish I can't put you on the assembly line, because they all speak Polish.

"They won't accept you, and you won't be able to communicate with them anyway".

"This is obvious discrimination. It is no wonder that youth unemploymentis on the rise."

Mr Moss, a Tory MP, said the incident was reported to him at a constituency surgery early last year. He did not remember the woman's name or the factory involved.

He raised the incident publicly during a House

of Commons debate on the effect of immigration in

Cambridgeshire last week.

Mr Moss said it was indicative of the problems

caused by large-scale immigration in his area.

"It is not just Polish workers", he said,

"there are also Estonians, Lithuanians and others.

"Local people cannot get jobs in the factories in which historically they worked. I have tried each and every way to find a solution to the problem.

"Where have the indigenous population gone? These are people who do not have cars and cannot travel to find a job, so where are they in the local community?"

Mr Moss said it was no good arguing that the migrants were only taking the jobs that locals didn't want.

"In my constituency, they are doing jobs that my people did a few years ago. Let us not kid ourselves - there is displacement."

He also called for action to tackle gangmasters who exploit Eastern European workers by bringing them to the county, paying them poverty wages, and making them live in crowded accommodation at exorbitant rents.

Figures released last month revealed a massive influx of immigrants to Britain from the former Eastern Bloc since 11 countries including Poland, Estonia and Lithuania, joined the EU in 2004.

Around 640,000 Eastern Europeans, most of them Poles, have registered to work in Britain.

But the figure could be as high as 800,000, experts believe, because in most cases the Government keeps no record of the self- employed, spouses or children.