LONDON (AFP) ? Businesses should recruit more unemployed British youths rather than taking on migrant workers, the work and pensions secretary is expected to say on Friday.
In a speech in Madrid Iain Duncan Smith will urge employers to give young people a chance and "not just fall back on labour from abroad".
Official figures show that almost 90 percent of the 400,000 jobs created since the coalition government came to power in May last year went to foreign workers.
"We have to ensure that our immigration system works in the interests of Britain, enabling us to make a realistic promise to our young school-leavers," Duncan Smith will say, according to pre-released extracts of his speech.
"It is part of our contract with the British people."
His words have already drawn parallels with former prime minister Gordon Brown's 2007 pledge to create "British jobs for British workers".
That approach was widely criticised when it emerged that around 80 percent of the jobs created under Labour went to migrants.
In his speech to the Spanish Foundation for Analysis and Social Studies thinktank (FAES) Duncan Smith will say Britain needs an immigration system "that gives the unemployed a level playing field".
Controlling immigration is "critical" to avoid "losing another generation to dependency and hopelessness"," he will say, while stressing that businesses must also play their part.
"If we do not get this right then we risk leaving more British citizens out of work, and the most vulnerable group who will be the most affected are young people."
"But government cannot do it all. As we work hard to break welfare dependency and get young people ready for the labour market, we need businesses to give them a chance, and not just fall back on labour from abroad.
"If government and business pull together on this, I believe we can finally start to give our young people a chance."
David Frost, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, defended businesses employing people from abroad, saying European workers were often better qualified.
He told BBC Radio 4 that employers wanted workers who could "read, write, communicate" and had a "strong work ethic".
"Too often that is not the case and there is a stream of highly able Eastern European migrants who are able to fill those jobs," he added.
"They are skilled, they speak good English and, more importantly, they want to work."
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