By
Julie Hyland
11 May 2013
The annual ritual of the Queen’s Speech to parliament, setting out the UK government’s legislative programme for the year, presages a further barrage of attacks on the social and democratic rights of working people.
It was couched in punitive and racist anti-immigrant measures aimed, the Queen intoned, at ensuring “this country attracts people who will contribute and deters those who will not.”
By scapegoating immigrants as undeserving “scroungers”, the government intends to deny people, including European Union (EU) citizens, the right to access public services, including welfare, health care and housing.
Legislation is to be brought forward compelling landlords to check the immigration status of prospective tenants or face massive fines. Higher fines are also to be imposed against employers using “illegal labour.”
Such measures are already in force, but are to become more systematised. Not only are landlords and businesses to be turned into de facto border guards, but doctors too. Non-EU migrants will have to prove they have private medical insurance or pay a bond of thousands of pounds before entering the country to cover the expense of any treatment they receive on the National Health Service (NHS). Medical staff will be expected to check this is in place before allowing migrants treatment.
EU citizens are also to be penalised under plans to restrict their access to unemployment benefits and social housing, and with the introduction of a residency test to qualify for access to legal aid. The government also intends to press for EU states to foot the bill if their citizens access NHS treatment.
These provocative measures were clearly aimed at appeasing supporters of the anti-immigrant, anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) amongst Conservative backbenchers and the Tory party at large.
The speech came just days after the May 2 local elections in 35 English councils, mainly Conservative heartlands. With turnout averaging around just 25 percent, the UKIP was the main beneficiary of a fall in the Conservative vote, as well as a record collapse for its coalition partner in government, the Liberal Democrats.
The haemorrhaging of Tory support to the UKIP also accounted for the fact that the Queen’s Speech made no mention
This article originally appeared on : World Socialist Web Site