Science union chief tells Labour to re-frame immigration debate

A trade union representing scientists and engineers in the UK has urged a potential future Labour government to abandon the “unwelcoming” immigration rhetoric.

Mike Clancy, the general secretary of Prospect, told delegates at the Labour Party Conference that the UK immigration debate had been “informed to some extent by a lack of facts very close to xenophobia, if not worse value sets”.

“I don’t think we understand at all yet the consequences of the last three years,” he said on 24 September. “It’s not just the conversations about hostile environment in terms of forms of immigration—it’s actually looking like a closed society that is unwelcoming.”