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Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge to cut work-related immigration to the UK is achievable, but linking visa rules to training may not solve long-standing skills and labour shortages, according to policy experts.
“Read my lips, I will bring immigration down,” the Labour leader told the Sun on Sunday newspaper. Migration is one of three topics frequently cited by voters as the main policy issues affecting the UK, according to polling.
Starmer said he wanted to ban “bad bosses” who underpaid workers or broke other employment rules from hiring overseas into the UK.
He also pledged to link immigration with skills policy, so that high demand for visas in particular sectors would automatically trigger a push to train more British workers.
By Labour’s own admission, Starmer’s pledge to cut net migration from a near-record inflow of 685,000 in 2023 should be easy to deliver.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government has already introduced measures, which Labour has supported, that appear to be reducing immigration to the UK.
These include a ban on masters students and care workers bringing relatives to the UK and a sharp increase in the salaries employers must pay to sponsor visas for skilled workers.
Recent Home Office data suggests applications to study in the UK and to work in care homes have already fallen sharply as a result of the changes.
Yvette Cooper, Labour’s shadow home secretary, on Sunday refused to set a target for the level of net migration a Labour government would see as appropriate, or a timescale by which the party would meet its pledge.
But she conceded in a BBC interview that Sunak’s measures meant Labour would “expect to see the numbers coming down swiftly”.
Cooper suggested Labour would go further, moving away from what she called a “free market approach to migration” to link employer use of visas with broader efforts to train British workers.
She cited five sectors — health, social care, IT, construction and engineering — where visa numbers had soared in recent years while the number of UK citizens starting apprenticeships had plunged.
The plans Labour has published so far do not appear to impose new obligations on employers to train UK workers before using the visa system but involve wider attempts by government to boost training.
However, business groups are nervous of the suggestion that “bad bosses” are responsible for rising immigration, and the prospect of new curbs making it harder for them to hire.
Neil Carberry, chief executive of the Recruitment & Employment Confederation, said a crude goal of cutting work-related immigration could be “really damaging to the economy” and drive away foreign investment.
Most employers did not routinely hire from abroad, because of the high costs, but immigration was a “palliative” to deep-seated skills and labour shortages, he said.
Carberry urged politicians to “fix the skills system before you take away the coping mechanism”.
The CBI, the employers’ organisation, meanwhile said it supported a “stronger link between [labour] shortages and the training that is available”.
“It’s a key part of a more honest conversation about immigration,” said Matthew Percival, who is responsible for policy on skills and workforce issues at the CBI.
Others noted that Starmer’s attempt to pin high immigration on “bad bosses” ignored the fact that recent increases had been overwhelmingly driven by publicly funded or subsidised sectors facing tight budget constraints — higher education, social care and the NHS.
Jonathan Portes, professor at King’s College London, said the sector-focused approach outlined by Cooper would have no impact unless Labour put money behind the current government’s largely unfunded NHS recruitment drive and boosted funding for social care.
When it came to the private sector, improving the UK’s skills base was the right goal, but trying to solve a deep-seated structural problem through a link to visa rules was “a triumph of hope over experience,” he said.
“Actually, you just need to get skills policy right — and migration will solve itself,” said Portes.
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