Migration Advisory Committee will identify and review sectors with high levels of international recruitment
Following on from Home Secretary's speech to the Labour Party conference yesterday promising a 'serious' approach to immigration, the Home Office has issued a press release with brief details of further measures intended to reduce net migration.
Image credit: UK GovernmentThe Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) will now be tasked with monitoring and identifying key sectors of the economy experiencing skills shortages that have resulted in large increases in overseas recruitment. MAC will produce an annual assessment for ministers in order to guide policy decisions.
The Home Office says the MAC's new assessment will be used to assist industries in promptly addressing skills shortages and encouraging a reduction in the reliance on overseas workers by focusing on training and development for domestic workers.
In addition, the Home Office announced stricter rules on visa sponsorship for migrant workers will be introduced, with new restrictions to prevent employers who violate employment laws from recruiting overseas workers.
The Government says it wants to ensure that international recruitment is no longer the default option for employers addressing skills shortages and that immigration is not used as a substitute for investing in domestic training and skills development.
In August, the Home Secretary commissioned the MAC to review the IT and engineering sectors' reliance on migrant workers, as both sectors have been among those most reliant on recruiting from overseas.
Among the questions posed to the MAC, Yvette Cooper asked what policy levers within the immigration system could be used more effectively to incentivise sectors to focus on recruiting from the domestic workforce.
Cooper said in her letter to the MAC: "We recognise and remain very grateful for the contribution that people from all over the world make to our economy and our public services but the system needs to be managed and controlled. The current high levels of international recruitment reflect weaknesses in the labour market including persistent skills shortages in the UK."
The Prime Minister echoed a similar desire to reduce the UK's reliance on overseas recruitment in his speech to the Labour Party conference yesterday, saying: "It is – as point of fact – the policy of this Government to reduce both net migration and our economic dependency upon it. I have never thought we should be relaxed about some sectors importing labour when there are millions of young people, ambitious and highly talented, who are desperate to work and contribute to their community."
In an opinion piece in the Guardian earlier this month, Professor Jonathan Portes of King's College London argued that the historically high levels of migration seen over the last 25 years now seem inevitable. Portes pointed out that France and Germany have a nearly identical percentage of foreign-born populations compared to the UK, indicating that economic and demographic forces are at play rather than solely immigration policy.
"The native-born labour force is already shrinking in almost all advanced economies … Without immigration, the numbers of people paying tax will shrink just as the numbers needing state support in later life are growing. It's not a sustainable mix," Portes wrote.
Portes says the government should recognise that the UK's relative attractiveness to migrants is a "huge comparative advantage, not a problem" and a "source of hope and optimism, not fear". To alleviate societal tensions, however, Professor Portes called for integration to be taken seriously again, including funding English classes for new arrivals, and moving recognised refugees out of hotels and into jobs as swiftly as possible.