Net migration set to plummet to pre-Brexit levels

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2 days ago

Net migration is set to plummet to pre-Brexit levels in the next year, the Government's chief immigration adviser has said.
Prof Brian Bell, the chairman of the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), claimed that falling job vacancies and an increase on the restrictions for foreign workers and students were likely to push net migration down from its current figure of 430,000 to 200,000 within a year.
That would return it to the pre-Brexit net migration average of between 200,000 and 250,000 before Boris Johnson became prime minister and opened up work and student visas.
Prof Bell's claim would mean net migration would fall to a quarter of its record peak of 906,000 in the year ending June 2023.
However, he warned that it would probably result in staff shortages in hospitality and retail, including chefs, waiters and shopworkers, which will be excluded from the list of highly-skilled or shortage occupations to benefit from overseas recruitment.
Sir Keir Starmer's White Paper has proposed that some 180 occupations will no longer be eligible to recruit overseas. Migrants will only be able to obtain a job if the position is graduate-level or above in an attempt to end low-paid migration.
'Foreign workers will be limited to occupations that are crucial for the industrial strategy or for the missions of the Government. Key sectors that will not be eligible therefore are, for example, hospitality,' said Prof Bell.
'So we've seen over the last few years that, for example, chefs, there's quite been quite a lot of visas issued for chefs. That will cease once that sector is removed from eligibility, and it won't be added back in because it's not part of the industrial strategy.
'You would see hospitality suffering. Retail will be unlikely to access it, whereas advanced manufacturing and life sciences will still have access, partly because they're more likely to be graduate jobs anyway and so remain eligible.'
Labour's efforts to reduce net migration follows restrictions introduced at the start of last year by the Conservatives to bar foreign workers and students from bringing in their dependants and the introduction of higher salary thresholds for migrants seeking skilled jobs in the UK.
Prof Bell said the Tories' measures, combined with a slump in vacancies, would cause net migration to fall further than had been expected by the Office for Budget Responsibility.
'I think it's possible that we'll get down to more like the 200,000 mark,' he said.
Official data published on Tuesday showed that the number of available jobs fell by 63,000 between March and May to 736,000 vacancies as companies held back on hiring and replacing workers who left.
However, he forecast that as the economy grew net migration would revert to between 250,000 and 300,000. It could fall lower depending on the impact of the White Paper plans to require foreign skilled workers to be graduates, ban the overseas recruitment of foreign care workers and raise English language standards.
'I think we'll revert to about 300,000 although probably a little lower given the White Paper's recent changes which, if enacted, will reduce net migration by perhaps about 80,000 at the average. So somewhere just below 300,000 would seem like a plausible medium-term scenario,' said Prof Bell.
His comments came as he launched a report by the MAC which warned that a proposed reduction in family visas aimed at reducing net migration risked breaching human rights law.
The MAC said that raising the annual salary threshold required for a Briton to bring their foreign partner or spouse to the UK from its current £29,000 to £38,700 is 'most likely' to conflict with rules ensuring rights to a family life under the European Convention on Human Rights.
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