The Home Secretary has given her first statement to Parliament on 30 July 2024, setting out a new approach to legal migration under a Labour government.

The new approach recognises the value of legal migration, while calling for proper control and management of the immigration system. This is in response to the significant increase in net migration over the previous five years and the heavy reliance on overseas recruitment, which Labour aims to reduce.

Migration and visa controls to be linked to skills and labour market policies

The new approach links migration policy and visa controls to skills and labour market policies, with the Migration Advisory Committee to work with Skills England, the Industrial Strategy Council, and the Labour Market Advisory Board to support a coherent approach to skills, migration, and labour market policy. Additionally, the Education Secretary announced the launch of Skills England to address skills gaps and lead the work on identifying sector skills gaps and plans to get more people back into work.

Strengthen the role of the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC)

The Home Office, under the Labour government, is set to strengthen the MAC to address over-reliance on international recruitment in key sectors due to labour market failures. There are plans to bolster the MAC, including deploying additional Home Office staff to its secretariat to enable more strategic work to share future policy.

MAC to be commissioned to review over-reliance of migration in IT and engineering sectors

As a first step, the Home Secretary will commission the MAC to review the dependence of sectors like IT and engineering on significant levels of international recruitment, which have consistently been included on shortage occupation lists (SOL). The SOL was scrapped under the previous government and temporarily replaced with an Immigration Salary List hich removed discounts for most IT and engineering roles. These sectors are among the top 10 in the UK with the highest percentage of their workforce comprising new foreign workers issued visas.

Labour to uphold the prior government's "five-point plan" to bring down net migration

Last year, the previous government announced a major shift in immigration policy to reduce record levels of net migration Dentons - Government announces key measures impacting work and dependants to bring down net migration. The Home Secretary stated the new government supports these changes and will continue to implement them.

This includes the increase in the minimum salary threshold for Skilled Worker visas and restrictions on who can bring dependants to the UK. Based on current trends, this is already having a significant impact on the number of visas being issued, especially within the Health and Care sector. Whilst the government will also maintain the new minimum salary threshold for family visas at £29,000, it will ask the MAC to conduct a full review before raising the threshold further, as previously planned.

Continue to reduce abuse within student and graduate visas routes

The Home Secretary emphasised the value of the economic and academic contributions made by foreign students in the UK. However, it will continue to implement the recommendations provided by the MAC following its review of the graduate visa route, to ensure it is not open to abuse and that the system is protected from those who seek to exploit it.

Conclusion

The new government's primary focus is to continue reducing net migration while adopting an evidence-based approach to shaping migration policy. This approach will be closely tied to the development of skills and talent within the UK. It is seen as a positive move towards identifying deficiencies in the current UK labour market and implementing measures across various industries to ensure a resilient talent strategy for the future. There is a possibility that future sponsorship could depend on businesses and sectors demonstrating their commitment to enhancing skills among the local workforce and training specialists within the UK, aiming to decrease dependence on international recruitment in the long run.