"Stop feeding this xenophobia."

Peter Mandelson yesterday to an interviewer asking questions about workers' concerns over the awarding of a £200 million construction project at the Total oil refinery at Lindsey to the Italian firm IREN. Apparently the managing director of IREN said that he was forced to only use Italian workers for most of the contract. Mario Saraceno said that the contract had to be finished within four months. Therefore, he said:

"That's why it was absolutely necessary to send to England our specialized workers, a close-knit team that could communicate with each other without language problems, which was particularly important from a safety point of view.

"There was no time for training and so, with the agreement of the British unions, we contracted out the work [to Italians]. But we also took on 30 British workers, among them technicians and labourers."

Now that's interesting as The Telegraph reports that

"the contract was awarded to an Italian firm, IREN, which has brought a large number of Italian and Portuguese workers to Britain to complete the work."

So IREN had to employ workers who spoke the same language, Italian, so they could communicate with each other without language problems and yet they employed Italian and Portuguese workers. Portuguese being the language naturally linked to Italian?