Let's learn from our EU neighbours

Migrant workers - a good thing or not? It's a topic that's still causing heated debate in pubs around the country. From my experience, the recent flood of eager, hard-working people from Eastern Europe has been the best thing that has happened to the licensed trade in years.

Our licensees are still pinching themselves because they can't quite believe their luck in having bar staff who not only turn up for every shift but arrive early with a smile on their faces and proceed to work their socks off.

No wonder a Polish city council sent a delegation to London to persuade its residents to come back home. These men and women are among the most conscientious and reliable I've ever come across and I'm sure their home countries must be feeling the pinch without them.

One of the arguments against allowing more workers from overseas into this country is that they will take all the jobs. A recent survey commissioned by the BBC backs this up, with more than half the respondents believing that the influx of migrant workers from Eastern Europe was making it harder for British people to get jobs.

There are more than enough jobs to go round for everyone of working age in this country. The problem is that the majority of people who are looking for work are reluctant to take jobs at the lower end of the pay scale - the ones with inconvenient hours where you're on your feet all the time and having to serve people, such as bar work, for instance.

Why should they bother when they can put their feet up at home and get more or less the same income from benefits? Most of the migrant workers from our newest EU partner countries have declared that they intend to return to their home countries eventually. Before they go, I'm hoping that their work ethic will rub off on our home-grown bar staff, who may begin to realise that the hospitality industry can be an exciting and rewarding place to work. In turn, this could have a positive effect upon the age-old problem of recruitment into the licensed trade.

But I'm not optimistic. Rather, I fear that our welfare culture could rub off on our visitors. If you come from a background where you and your family have had to work long and hard for everything you've achieved, sitting back and letting the state provide must seem very attractive.