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Migrant workers employed in the UK are at a higher risk of injury, illness or even death than their British counterparts, a new report has warned.

In its Safety and Migrant Workers report, the TUC claims that problems with learning English combined with unscrupulous employers are making migrants' life difficult.

The union has called on the government to tackle the issue by providing more investment and making it harder for employers to breach health and safety laws.

Long hours are cited as a potential cause of accidents due to overtiredness, while the fact that many are denied sick pay means, the TUC claims, that migrants come into work despite being too ill to so.

"Employers should be doing more to keep all their employees safe and well, wherever they come from," TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said.

"And in workforces with many migrant workers, where language difficulties pose potential problems, bosses need to make that extra effort to ensure everyone knows how to stay safe at work.

"The government must stump up more money so that unscrupulous employers who flout the law are brought into line."

He added that many migrant workers face "huge risks to their health, safety and welfare simply because their employers are fail to carry out sufficient safety checks".

The TUC says that many workers from outside the UK are not provided with suitable protective equipment or training.

It also calls for a change in the current policy whereby the average employer "receives a visit from a safety inspector once every 12-20 years and many small employers will never be inspected".

"Tragically, we are more likely to hear a report of a migrant worker being killed or injured than of an employer being prosecuted for failing to meet their safety obligations," Mr Barber said.

Commenting on the report, a spokesman for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said that in terns of health and safety law it is "totally irrelevant" as to what an employee's status is.

He added that it is also irrelevant whether migrants are illegally or legally working in this country as health and safety law applies wherever anyone is at work in British territory.

"Research we've done suggests that workers are not at more risk by virtue of being migrants, rather it's that some of the industries that they naturally tend to get employment in are industries traditionally have high rates of injury both numerically and proportionately," he said.