Business leaders seek 'unlimited immigration' from new EU states

The leaders of Britain's biggest businesses employing millions of people have called on the Government to allow unlimited immigration from Bulgaria and Romania when the two former Eastern Bloc states join the European Union next year.

Five of the group's advisory council, including the UK heads of Sainsbury, the supermarket giant, Centrica, which owns British Gas, and Merrill Lynch, the Wall Street investment bank, have put their names to the letter.

The leaders criticised Government ministers for "equivocating" in the face of "scare stories" in the right-wing media about a flood of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants. "The simple fact is that workers from other European countries come to the UK because there are jobs," the business leaders said. "It is a cause for support, not retrenchment.