Labour want us to believe their supposed crack down on migrants claiming benefits will save loads of money. By this they mean jobseekers allowance, child benefit and child tax credit but they have nothing to say about the various in work benefits they'd still be entitled to. It's as if they don't exist...
Labour's spokesman David Hanson MP has just been on Daily Politics refusing repeatedly to answer a simple question - will EU workers be able to claim "in work" benefits under their new scheme. I wonder why? It appears they have no intention of doing anything about them but don't really want the public to know that, preferring to propagate the notion that they'll control migrant benefits per se.
Given their pledge to prosecute employers failing to pay the minimum wage, he was equally evasive in refusing to comment on enforcement under his party's oversight. Possibly this is because between 1998-2007 there were zero prosecutions and from 2007 - 2010 there were only 7.
It was then put to him that his party are now claiming that exit controls are essential in controlling immigration when it was Labour who abolished them in 1998 (something Hanson denied), and a Labour minister who claimed in 2002 that "they did not contribute to the overall effectiveness of immigration controls". He didn't want to comment on what Labour did in the past evidently. Didn't think their track record ought to be open to scrutiny...
Now if that were a Tory party record, the usual suspects would be here baying for blood, screaming that the nasty party were at it again - looking after their rich mates, protecting greedy exploitative employers, hurting the poor and the vulnerable blah, blah, blah. What's Labour's excuse then?
Andrew Neil summed it all up perfectly, commenting that everything they seem to be suggesting now flies in the face of what they actually did when they were in power. Dead right I reckon!
The relevant section is at c. 31 mins. into the show which is available here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...itics-28042015