Speaking at a meeting of Bengali caterers in Oxford at 2pm on Wednesday 9 March Keith Best, Chief Executive of IAS, condemned the indifference of the Government to the needs of 10,000 Indian restaurants throughout the UK. The meeting was attended by restaurant owners came from all over the south including, Birmingham, Cardiff, Coventry and Swindon representing many more through the Guild of Bangladeshi Restaurateurs.

“Indian restaurants not only provide pleasure to 2.5 million curry customers every week but also make a major contribution to the UK economy – over £1 million annually,” said Keith Best. “Yet their future is under threat as they cannot fill some 7,000 vacancies among kitchen porters and other staff. They need Bengali speakers as that is the language of the kitchen. Others cannot undertake this work. One restaurant owner in Kidlington has tried both Polish and Czech Republic workers but they left. The Government has withdrawn the Sectors Based Scheme (SBS) which was designed to help and promised a review: it was due out in December but will not now appear until June. In the meantime the Indian restaurant trade is facing crisis. SBS was a fiasco: employers paid £153 each to the Government for a work permit only to find that the worker was then refused entry clearance by the Government in Dhaka and they got nothing for their money. We need a new scheme urgently without the ill-considered aspects of SBS which ensured that it was bound to fail. The Home Secretary expects lower skilled workers needed in the UK to come from Eastern Europe. This displays massive insensitivity towards the Indian restaurant trade – how many Bengali speaking chefs can be found in Estonia or Latvia? Bengali restaurant owners pay their taxes and provide a much-needed and enjoyed service to millions of British people – they deserve better of the Government.

“The British public may forgive the Government for many follies but they will not easily forgive the destruction of what Robin Cook MP when Foreign Secretary described as the “national dish” namely chicken-tikka-masala.” What the Government has done is to provoke a massive protest and lobbying by British Bengalis just before a general election.