Government commissions the Migration Advisory Committee to conduct a new, broad-ranging review of the shortage occupation list

The Home Office last week released correspondence between Kevin Foster MP, the Minister for Safe and Legal Migration, and the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC).

Image credit: UK GovernmentIn a letter dated 24 August, Foster commissioned the MAC to conduct a new, broad-ranging review of the shortage occupation list (SOL). Workers in occupations on the list can be paid 80% of a job's usual going rate to qualify for a Skilled Worker visa.

Specifically, Foster asks the MAC's review to consider:

1. Should the salary requirement for jobs on the SOL, in future, be whichever is higher of the going rate (rather than 20% less than the going rate) or £20,480, subject to an absolute minimum of £10.10 per hour?

2. Which jobs on the current SOL should continue to be included, and which should be removed?

3. Which jobs, if any, based on evidence provided by stakeholders, should be added to the SOL, at:

1. Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF) 6 or above?
2. RQF 3-5?

Foster said: "The MAC's last SOL report, in September 2020, recommended several additions to the SOL at RQF3-5. We did not accept these recommendations then, other than those relating to the Health and Care Sectors, as we felt the time was not right to make such widescale changes while the Skilled Worker visa route was still bedding in and the state of the labour market emerging from Covid-19 restrictions was highly uncertain. Since then, the labour market picture has become clearer. We now consider the time is right to review shortages at these levels against the latest available evidence."

For occupations classified below RQF3, Foster said that the Government continues to receive representations from various sectors for provision in the visa system for such jobs. The only occupation classified below RQF3 that is currently on the SOL is social care workers, which was added in December due to severe post-pandemic and post-Brexit shortages.

Foster noted that other ad hoc, temporary provisions had been added for occupations below RQF3 due to requests from industry, and he agreed that there should be a more formalised approach to such requests, as the MAC has suggested in an earlier report.

Foster added, however, that the Government is not minded to review the RQF3 threshold more widely or see it effectively undermined via additions to the SOL.

More broadly, Foster said the SOL needed to be time limited and sectors needed to show they had a strategy to end being reliant on migrant workers.

Foster stated: "No occupation should be on the SOL forever if migration is part of a successful plan to address shortage of a particular role in the UK Labour Market. Sectors must therefore present a realistic, time-bound strategy for ending their reliance on migration before such jobs can be added to the SOL to begin with. In a similar vein, occupations on the SOL must produce credible evidence to remain on the SOL when it comes to be reviewed in the future."

In a response sent last week, Professor Brian Bell, the chair of MAC, accepted the commission and endeavoured to report to the Government as early in Spring 2023 as possible.

Bell noted, however, that previous Office for National Statistics (ONS) data used by the MAC appears to have been incorrect and this would impact on the review.

Professor Bell said: "We have recently become aware of an issue with how the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have collected and applied these new occupational codes to various datasets that we use to inform our recommendations on the SOL and that Home Office use to determine eligibility for the Skilled Worker route. At present we do not have any confidence in this data such that we can reasonably use it to make any recommendations. ONS have announced that they will provide an update in September on the scale of the issue and how long it will take to fix."

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said in July that labour shortages are holding back growth in the UK. In a submission to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, the CBI said labour shortages are being felt across a variety of different sectors in lower and semi-skilled roles, including those which are not eligible for visas under the UK's new point-based immigration system.

The CBI commented: "The government should help businesses hire when domestic workers are not available by commissioning the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to recommend a new Shortage Occupation List and granting temporary visas for roles in obvious shortage until their review is finalised. Roles at all skills levels are important to the economy, so CBI members think there should be flexibility in the immigration system such that where there's evidence of persistent domestic labour shortages, as advised by the MAC, people in roles below RQF level 3 can enter the UK if the salary threshold is met."