Will Tanner is director of the think tank Onward.
LONDON — It should surprise no one that the U.K. government’s proposals for a points-based immigration system have attracted opprobrium from the Labour Party and hysteria from business groups. This is how every proposal to bring control to Britain’s runaway immigration system has been received for the last decade.
But, this time, critics should stop complaining and start preparing.
The pattern should by now be familiar. A minister announces a change to curb net migration. They are accused of cultural division and economic ineptitude, and fierce lobbying helps to dilute the impact or open another route. Britain’s reliance on unskilled overseas workers carries on as before. This is why Theresa May used to refer to the immigration system as a balloon — you squeeze on one end and the system bulges elsewhere.
In these circular debates, critics have taken little notice of the fact that lower levels of migration are supported by a majority of voters of all ages, ethnicities and political views, or that immigration control has been a key demand of the electorate at several general elections and the 2016 referendum.
The government’s plans rightly to distinguish between migrants on the basis of their potential contribution.
Nor has it made much difference that the Bank of England, Migration Advisory Committee and House of Lords economic affairs committee have all shown that low-skilled migration has a negative impact on the pay and employment prospects of Britain’s worst paid workers. Put this together with the fact that, between 2007 and 2014, the number of low-skilled migrants rose from 7 percent of all workers to 16 percent and you start to see the problem.
Businesses have relied upon low-skilled migration ever since Tony Blair unilaterally decided to forgo transitional controls at the time eight Central and Eastern European countries joined the EU in 2004. When the decision was taken, his government estimated a few thousand additional migrants from new member states. In fact, it resulted in the U.K. population of residents born in these countries multiplying five-fold between 2004 and 2010.
This dependence has not abated despite the best efforts of Blair’s successors.
Annual net migration stood at a non-negligible 212,000 in the latest ONS statistics: equivalent to a city the size of Norwich being added to the population every year. In fact, if the Conservatives had met their promise to reduce migration to the “tens of thousands” every year between 2010 and 2018, the U.K. population would be 1.4 million people smaller due to lower net migration. It is hardly surprising that voters felt the need to give politicians a kick up the backside, and Boris Johnson a mandate to act.
An empty shop unit in the town centre in Wrexham | Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images
Having had a decade to prepare for lower net migration and done little, business leaders should now act fast ahead of the government’s end of year deadline.
More than half (55 percent) of EEA migrants work within occupations with a skill level below British A level, the government’s cut-off for determining which migrants are skilled. This means many firms will need to train domestic workers or automate to fill gaps.
This would in itself be a welcome change. Since 2011, employer spending per trainee has fallen by 17 percent in real terms, adult learning participation in the U.K. is lower than it has been in two decades and productivity is flatlining.
The government’s plans rightly use Britain’s departure from the EU to distinguish between migrants on the basis of their potential contribution rather than their inherited nationality. If you accept that there must be some limit to net migration (admittedly not a view held in the Labour Party leadership race), it makes little sense for a country to block a skilled scientist from Singapore while letting in a low-skilled laborer from Spain.
There are, however, a lot of scientists in Singapore. If the Home Office is not careful, there is a chance we may see net migration starting to creep up again.
This is why points-based systems introduced in other countries are typically supplemented with some kind of annual cap. If this is deemed too blunt a method, one alternative proposal is to create an Office for Migration Responsibility, to hold ministers to account on immigration numbers just as the Office for Budget Responsibility holds the Treasury to account on fiscal issues.
Whether such measures are needed or not will depend partly on how robustly the government defends its plans in the face of pressure from business and its political opponents. If it wants to maintain credibility and deliver the lower net migration the Conservatives have long promised to voters, it should hold firm.