To address seeming ‘overreliance’ on international labour, the Labour government’s big idea is more joined-up policy on immigration and skills. This briefing sets out why this approach is unlikely to deliver lower levels of immigration, but how it can still be a political success by showcasing immigration as not only supplementing, but supporting, local skills.
KEY POINTS
- The new Labour government views the perceived dependence of some sectors of the UK economy on overseas workers as unsustainable and contrary to the national interest.
- Joined-up immigration and skills policy is framed by it as key to reducing employer demand for immigrant workers, but this looks doomed to failure in the light of the government’s growth mission.
- This policy can still be a political success, however, even if it does not dramatically reduce immigration numbers. But, for this to be achieved, it must be actively and aggressively presented to the public in the right way.
- Public attitudes to immigration are deeply conflicted, not just between, but within, people. But it is clear that when opportunities for overseas workers feel like they come at the expense of local people, this drives political polarisation and fracture in the UK.
- In the face of the continued need for immigration, the purpose of the Charge should be to ensure local people do not feel ignored, undercut and supplanted by immigration, but supported, invested in, and trained. But the potential for the Immigration Skills Charge to sit at the core of a more joined-up immigration and skills policy has so far been wasted.
- With the Conservative leadership candidates and the Reform Party election manifesto also wading into this this policy area, it is set to become a key political battleground. The main parties’ claims to joined-up immigration and skills policy may come to lie not only at the core of how the UK is to be governed, but even go some way to determining who will get to govern it.
DOWNLOAD THE BRIEFING: PDF