Immigration policy must serve Britain, not party politics – NFB

The Government has published its new ‘Immigration White Paper: Restoring Control over the Immigration System,’ which sets out major reforms to the UK’s immigration system.

Richard Beresford, Chief Executive of the National Federation of Builders (NFB), said: “The immigration system should be a strategic tool, not a political one. Too many government have tinkered with it for their own benefit and not the countries. Sustainable national growth is impossible when party politics comes ahead of the nation.

If we want to build 1.5 million homes, retrofit 20 million homes, fix the grid, build roads, rail, and renewables, we need a skilled workforce to do it. In 2025, we simply do not have enough UK workers to achieve that and by 2027, things will be even worse due to many more people retiring from the industry.”

The reforms included in the White Paper are aimed at reducing net migration and tightening up the immigration system, these include:

· Raising the Skilled Worker threshold to RGF 6 (graduate level)

· Abolishing the Immigration Salary List

· Access to the Points-Based immigration system will be limited to occupations

· Creation of a new Labour Market Evidence Group to assess the state of the labour market

· New requirements on employers to boost domestic training

· New English language requirements

Rico Wojtulewicz, Head of Policy and Market Insight for the NFB, commented: “We commend the Government’s intention for a workforce plan and talking about all departments working together, however, unless it understands who train and retain our workers, it will fail to solve the worker capacity immigration challenges.

In construction, SMEs train 73% of apprentices, but because they do not have strong pipeline of work, with most operating hand to mouth, they cannot afford an apprentice. Things are so bad that many cannot even afford to retain existing stuff, let alone afford an apprentice. If they had work pipelines, they would be able to train as they did in the 1980s, when SMEs built 40% of homes and we trained more bricklayers and carpenters than all construction apprentices today.

This Government appears to be taking nation renewal seriously and so we expect that conversations about strategic solutions will grow now we have the immigration whitepaper. We would also note that we are delighted to see the Government hint at embracing our recommendations for a one in one out scheme, whereby, if a company takes on a foreign worker they must train or fund the training of a UK worker in the same discipline.”

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