PLANS by the UK Government to repeal EU freedom of movement rules in the UK pose a "threat" to the health and social care sector, Torfaen MP Nick Thomas-Symonds has said.

The Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill is part of the move towards the government’s new points-based immigration system, to be introduced from 2021, and will go before MPs today.

But Mr Thomas-Symonds, who was made shadow home secretary under new Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer last month, said: “We have 180,000 EU nationals who are here, who are frankly helping to keep our services going.

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“There are other workers in other sectors – retail workers for example – all of whom the government wants to send out a message to them with their new immigration system that they are low-skilled.

“I do not think it is right to be clapping our frontline workers and then today be sending out a signal that they are unskilled and unwelcome in the country.

“It is not fair and it is not in the national interest.”

The bill does not flesh out the details of the new immigration rules, which will explain the future system for EU and non-EU nationals who move to the UK after the Brexit transition period ends on December 2020.

It was previously introduced in the Commons in December 2018 but stalled weeks later as then-prime minister Theresa May’s minority administration lacked the numbers to win key Brexit-linked votes.

Boris Johnson brings it back with an 80-seat majority but amid pressure for the immigration rules to support those dubbed “key workers” during the coronavirus pandemic.

A YouGov poll, for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), suggested 54 per cent of Britons would support loosening immigration restrictions for workers who were defined as essential during the crisis.

Ahead of the Bill’s return to the Commons, home secretary Priti Patel said in a brief statement: “This historic piece of legislation gives the UK full control of our immigration system for the first time in decades and the power to determine who comes to this country.

“Our new points-based system is firmer, fairer, and simpler.

“It will attract the people we need to drive our economy forward and lay the foundation for a high wage, high skill, high productivity economy.”

Satbir Singh, chief executive of the JCWI, called for further changes and said: “The fight against Covid-19 has shown us all just how much our survival and wellbeing depends on our key workers.

“So many of them have come from other countries and help keep this one running.

“Bus drivers and lorry drivers, care workers and shop workers, nurses and cleaners – they are not ‘unskilled’ or unwelcome, they are the backbone of our country and they deserve the security of knowing that this place can be their home too.”