UK hospitality firms have been urged to beware of breaching discrimination laws when recruiting and employing eastern European workers.

Justin Beevor, a partner at law firm Mace & Jones, said: “Although testing an applicant’s standard of written and oral English may seem like common sense to an employer, the test could be seen as a barrier to employment if the job description doesn’t require any given standard. The same tests must also be applied to all candidates regardless of their national origins.”

Beevor has also urged employers to check all prospective workers’ passports and ensure copies are kept on file for possible defence against a charge of employing an illegal migrant worker. However, “checking one job applicant’s paperwork, because they have a foreign accent but not another’s who has no accent, would be discriminatory.”

Around 600,000 eastern Europeans have migrated to Britain since the European Union expanded in 2004, compared with an original government estimate of 13,000.

A further 50,000 workers are also expected in the UK from Romania and Bulgaria following the accession of two countries to the EU last month.