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UK MP Rupert Lowe has sparked contention aft making anti-migration remarks targeting radical of Indian and Pakistani root successful Britain, contempt the evident hazard of being labelled racist.Independent MP Lowe claimed that “millions of Pakistanis and Indians” are being brought to the UK to instrumentality up jobs that, according to him, should alternatively spell to unemployed Britons.He wrote connected X: "I don't judge we should import millions of Pakistanis and Indians to bash jobs that unemployed Brits should beryllium doing."“If that makes maine racist, past truthful beryllium it,” helium added.
According to the Office for National Statistics, 2021 Census, Lowe's constituency of Great Yarmouth has conscionable 907 residents of Indian and Pakistani root — 786 Indian and 121 Pakistani.
That is little than 1% of the town's 99,750 population.The unemployment complaint successful Great Yarmouth stands astatine 9.8%, astir treble the nationalist mean of 5.4%.According to information cited from Migration Observatory, University of Oxford, "Migrants successful the UK Labour Market: An Overview", nationally, 20% of worker jobs successful December 2025 were held by non-UK nationals — 6.5 cardinal jobs. This stock has accrued steadily from 12% successful 2014.
Between January 2021 and December 2025, Indian and Nigerian nationals saw the sharpest increases successful UK employment. But these workers are not taking jobs from Britons. They are concentrated successful sectors with chronic staffing shortages.A 4th of jobs held by non-EU nationals successful December 2025 were successful the wellness and attraction assemblage — 161,000 Skilled Worker visas were granted to non-EU attraction workers unsocial during this period.
The Home Office added attraction workers to the visa eligibility database precisely due to the fact that the assemblage could not capable vacancies domestically.Lowe has antecedently claimed that "1.3 cardinal overseas nationals" are claiming Universal Credit. The existent figure: 13% of Universal Credit recipients are non-UK nationals — 1.1 cardinal people. This is little than their 16% stock of the working-age population.Migrants connected work, survey oregon household visas are mostly barred from claiming benefits nether the "No Recourse to Public Funds" rule.Lowe, the Member of Parliament for Great Yarmouth, was elected arsenic a Reform UK campaigner successful July 2024 earlier having the enactment whip suspended successful March 2025. He present leads the Restore Britain enactment and has a past of anti-immigrant rhetoric, including a December 2025 tweet stating: "I americium sick of proceeding that Britain was built by immigrants. No. No it was not. It was built by British men and women."His enactment has refused to condemn supporters who called for "total remigration" — the deportation of each non-white citizens.
