Brexit-backing fashion boss says UK needs more foreign workers 

Lord Wolfson, a prominent backer of Brexit and chief executive of the High Street chain Next, is urging the government to let more foreign workers into the UK to ease the labour shortages. 

He says the UK’s current immigration policy was crippling economic growth. 

Speaking to the BBC, he said firms should pay a tax to employ foreign workers, to encourage them to recruit from the UK first.

“We have got people queuing up to come to this country to pick crops that are rotting in fields, to work in warehouses that otherwise wouldn’t be operable, and we’re not letting them in.

“And we have to take a different approach to economically productive migration.”

Lord Wolfson told the BBC that the government need to decide if the UK was an open free trading nation or post-Brexit it wants to be “fortress Britain.” 

“I think in respect of immigration, it’s definitely not the Brexit that I wanted, or indeed, many of people who voted Brexit wanted,” he said.

“And we have to remember, you know, we’re all stuck in this Brexit argument, we have to remember that what post-Brexit Britain looks like, is not the preserve of those people that voted Brexit, it’s for all of us to decide.”

He added that the majority of people in Britain have a “very pragmatic view” of immigration.