Alan Sugar spoke at the Cambridge Union yesterday on a range of issues: Donald Trump, the Labour Party and Sadiq Khan, and, of course, The Apprentice. What troubled me most, however, were his final comments of the evening. One of the last questions put to him was whether Britain suffers from a lack of work ethic compared to the Chinese labour force. His reply was a condemnation of British workers: he claimed they are ungrateful for work and do not experience real poverty.

I am not here to make a bonkers English Defence League or British National Party-esque case against immigration, but rather to draw attention to the attitude of a number of British employers, some of which are disheartened, out-of-touch, and pernicious for both employees and the country. Lord Sugar, after calling for plain honesty within the four walls of the Union, asked: “If you go into a hotel in England, who's doing the cleaning? Who's behind the bar? It's not traditional British [people] ... they're ungrateful for work”. Far from being called out for what could be construed as a racist remark, I saw nods ripple the crowd and applause ring out, without challenge, soon afterwards.

As Cambridge students we are at risk of buying into this type of dangerous, divisive rhetoric that has often been heard from employers and public figures in recent years. It is fine for them to claim that their best workers are on average Eastern European, for example, in an attempt to advocate open borders. It becomes hazardous when these claims are extrapolated to more general, vitriolic statements about a nation of workers. Lord Heseltine claimed in 2014 that “we don't get up early enough ... work hard enough, we're not ambitious enough” (note how the use of “we” makes generalisation okay). Jamie Oliver at the same time called Brits “wet” and stated that European workers are “much stronger, much tougher”. Lawrence Beere, a hotel-owner, claimed that he cannot employ British workers because they “simply don't last”.

I am not claiming that Brits particularly are the butt of racism. But in a country with anti-immigration parties such as UKIP, this rhetoric of intolerance really doesn’t help. We run the risk of disheartening British workers and fuelling further racism in backlash when we make statements about inferiority. No racism is acceptable. and the fact is if you want Brits to work harder, it is not going to happen as a result of blanket insults.

Sugar supported his arguments with claims that Brits lack the “hunger and desire” to work and earn. Apparently there is not the poverty and "starving" necessary for this hunger to exist. He asked if the British people are actually poor, with their “iPhones, iPads and Nike trainers”. According to the successful Sugar, no one in Britain today experiences the same hardships he experienced in his childhood. Oxfam, on the other hand, claims that 14 million people do not have enough money to get by. In 2015 the Debt Advisory Centre published the statistic that 4.7 million Brits have been cut off due to a failure to pay energy bills.

The independent Lord went on to call Jeremy Corbyn a "lunatic", and many like Sugar fail to see why Corbyn was elected Labour leader. However, others certainly feel strongly that the poverty which Sugar denies and Corybn intends to combat still exists. NASUWT, a teachers' union, has stated that some children come into school hungry and, in some cases, starved – like something out of the Victorian age.

The employers and older generations particularly need to ensure they understand the position of younger, less fortunate citizens – this becomes all the more critical if they are going to make statements about their desire to work. It appears that employers see a few examples of bad workers and see fit to make public statements about all workers. Just as we have been taught not to paint entire nations with the same brush, we must be careful about alienating our own citizens. Are we surprised that such an irrational hatred towards immigrants has found a place to grow in Britain?

Imagine you are a child who lives in real poverty and has dreams of finding a stable job, or even coming to a top university such as Cambridge. According to Lord Sugar, you don't exist and the people you might want to work for deny that you have the ‘hunger’ to work – although they've never met you. Does this mean you going to follow those dreams or will you try to forget them?

As we have learnt from recent allegations of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, we need to be careful about what we say and how we say it. Racism fuels more racism. Being an employer and having experienced bad British workers in your environment does not mean you are entitled to make statements about British workers as a whole. Similarly, even if you have experienced "real" poverty, you are in no place to say that it doesn't exist anymore because you see people wearing Nike trainers.