The Home Office has issued further details of how it intends to reduce the flow of migrant workers into the UK, and the role of the Migration Advisory Committee in doing so.
This week, home secretary Yvette Cooper told the Labour party annual conference that the government would take a “serious” approach to immigration.
In her speech to conference, she said: “A serious government knows that immigration is important, and that is why it needs to be properly managed and controlled so the system is fair – so rules are properly respected and enforced but we never again see a shameful repeat of the Windrush scandal that let British citizens down.
“So in three months, we’ve set up the Border Security Command, launched new investment in covert operations, and high tech investigations to go after the gangs, with proper enforcement and returns.
Migrant workers
“And instead of spending £700 million and employing 1,000 people to send four volunteers to Rwanda, we are boosting our border security instead.”
In an announcement following her speech, the Home Office said sectors most reliant on overseas workers would be targeted to ensure they “address their failure to invest in skills here in the UK”.
MAC will be tasked with highlighting those sectors where there have been surges in overseas recruitment and will perform a yearly assessment to ministers.
Rules around sponsorship of migrant workers will also be strengthened so that the government can take “strong action” against employers who flout employment laws, restricting their ability to hire foreign workers in the future.
This is in addition to clamping down on visa abuse and ramping up investigations by UK Visas and Immigration, who can suspend and revoke licences where employers abuse the system.
After it was elected to power in July, Labour briefly outlined how it would link migration policy with skills and wider labour market trends, working with bodies such as Skills England to boost the domestic workforce.
MAC’s annual assessment will be used to assist industries in addressing skills shortages and encourage employers to focus on training domestic workers, rather than relying on recruiting from overseas.
In August, Cooper commissioned the MAC to review the IT and engineering sectors’ reliance on migrant workers, and further sectors are likely to undergo similar reviews.
The Home Office said that MAC’s expanded role would include “work to assess the root causes of why certain sectors are so reliant on overseas workers”, and that “additional capacity” would be found to fulfil this role.
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Yesterday, Skills England published its first report ‘setting the scene’ for the newly formed government body to be “the driving force” behind the much-needed upskilling of the economy.
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