MICHAEL HOWARD will use a speech today in Burnley, the power base of the British National Party, to call for restrictions on the rights of East European migrants to work in the UK.

The Tory leader’s decision to deliver such a message in a town scarred by racial tension in recent years is already being dismissed by ministers as “opportunistic, shabby and despicable”.

Aides insist that Mr Howard’s speech is “measured” in tone and will include a strong denunciation of the BNP, which has seven seats on the local council, as well as urging more action to improve race relations.

He is expected to praise the contribution made to Britain by millions of immigrants including his own family, who were Jewish refugees from Romania. However, Mr Howard will say that the Government should bring in measures to prevent migrants from the countries joining the EU on May 1 having free access to jobs and benefits in Britain.

Although the Government will announce on Monday plans to prevent people arriving in Britain without jobs, it has resisted pressure to issue strictly limited work permits or impose a complete ban on such “new Europeans” getting employment in Britain. Mr Howard will condemn Tony Blair for failing to address a problem that the Government has “known about for three years and which will be upon us in less than three months”.

He will add: “Almost every other country in the EU has quite rightly taken the precaution of putting in place transitional arrangements to deal with immigration from the accession countries. It is still not too late for the British Government to put in place transitional arrangements as well.”

The UK and Ireland are now the only EU members which will not restrict the rights to work of people from accession states such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Mr Howard is understood to support a work-permit scheme for two years after the ten new states join the EU.

The Government argues that Britain needs a migrant labour force to sustain economic growth and has dismissed fears that huge numbers of people will flood over borders on May 1.

Official forecasts suggest that only 13,000 more migrants will arrive in Britian this year as a result of EU expansion. If these figures turn out to be wrong, “safeguard measures” limiting rights to work can be introduced within days. Ministers are angry that Mr Howard has decided to raise the issue now, with one suggesting yesterday that the speech was a “knee-jerk response to a campaign by right-wing tabloid newspapers”.

They say the Tories supported the Accession Bill last summer, when the Opposition front bench abandoned proposed amendments which would have prevented people from the countries joining the EU working in Britain for up to seven years.

Denis MacShane, the Minister for Europe, said last night: “The Conservative Party claims to be a friend of the EU’s new members but such is Michael Howard’s opportunism that he is going back on a policy which was even supported by Iain Duncan Smith.

“This is a shabby and despicable insult to the grandchildren of the Poles and Czechs who flew Spitfires to defend Britain in World War II.”

The BNP has more seats on the local council than anywhere else in Britain and has high hopes of a breakthrough in the North West region at this summer’s European elections.

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