Migration report plans could increase labour shortages, business leaders say - as it happened

And here is some reaction to the MAC report from thinktanks and academics.

From Stephen Clarke, senior economic analyst at the Resolution Foundation, a thinktank specialising in the needs of low and middle-earners

The migration advisory committee’s recommendations would, if accepted by government, represent the biggest change to the UK labour market in a generation.

If enacted these proposals would effectively end low-skilled migration, while prioritising mid- and high- skill migration in areas where we have labour shortages. This would represent a huge shift for low-paying sectors like food manufacturing, hotels and domestic personnel, where over one in five workers are migrants.

While it will take some time for the government to respond to this report, it is time those sectors started to prepare more proactively for change, including by looking at the need to invest in new technology, and recruiting from harder to reach parts of the existing UK population.

From Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a thinktank focusing on integration, migration and diversity.

The MAC is right to recommend that high-skilled and low-skilled migration are treated differently in future. Most of the public would agree. That should also mean the end of the one-size-fits-all net migration target.

The report also rightly notes that funding to manage the local impacts of immigration on public services needs to get to the areas that need it most. Expanding the Controlling Immigration Fund would be one way to do this. In our research across the UK we found that local impacts make a real difference to how people view immigration.

This report should now prompt politicians to step up and lead the debate about how Britain will approach immigration after Brexit – a debate that’s been ducked and delayed for the last two years, causing frustration and mistrust on all sides.

It is missing a vital element, however – the voice of the public. Neither the MAC nor the government has engaged the public in the choices we now face on immigration. That’s a serious oversight - the national conversation on immigration found an urgent need to rebuild public confidence and consent in our immigration system, and greater public engagement would help to do that.

From Ryan Shorthouse, director of Bright Blue, a liberal Conservative thinktank

The migration advisory committee has provided evidence that cuts through the exaggerations of both sides of a very divisive debate, showing that immigration generally has no or very modest positive economic and social impacts.

The migration advisory committee has offered some strong suggestions for reforming our immigration system: abolishing the cap on tier 2 (general) visas and extending the tier 5 youth mobility scheme, as Bright Blue has been campaigning for.

But this report was a missed opportunity to propose significant reforms to our post-Brexit immigration system to ensure it is more effective, popular and contributory-based.

From Prof Jonathan Portes, a senior fellow at The UK in a Changing Europe, an academic network, who wrote a paper that contributed to the MAC report

Today’s report is backed up by the most comprehensive evidence and research ever produced on the impact of immigration on the UK. Contrary to fears that immigration might reduce the incentive for businesses to boost productivity, my paper suggests the opposite: immigration has a substantial and positive impact on productivity. Areas that see inflows of immigrants see productivity rise. Other papers show that immigrants – especially those coming from the EU – who arrived during 2016 are expected to make a large contribution, more than £25bn, to the public finances over their entire time in the country [see 11.16am], taking account of the taxes they pay and the service they consume, and that immigration has a positive, albeit small, impact on subjective well-being – how happy people are – at a local level. In other words, much of the scaremongering we’ve heard over the past few years has little or no basis in fact.

What does that mean for policy? The MAC are too polite to say so, but this report shows beyond doubt that the government’s economically illiterate net migration target should finally be put out of its misery. After Brexit, we will need immigration – for growth, productivity, and not least to help the public finances – more than ever. Since 2010, many aspects of UK immigration policy have been based not on analysis and evidence but on unpleasant and damaging nativism. This report provides an opportunity for our politicians to reverse that, if they have the courage to take it.

From Richard Brown, research director at the Centre for London, a thinktank focusing on the needs of London

This report highlights the positive contribution that highly skilled EU workers bring to London’s economy. Yes we need bankers, lawyers, tech specialists, but we also need low skilled workers too.

Nearly 30 per cent of London’s construction workers are from the EU. A huge number of European workers keep the city’s cafes, restaurants and hotels running. London’s design, artistic and tech start-ups benefit from London’s ability to draw workers from across the continent.

Expanding the youth mobility scheme to EU workers would enable young Europeans to fill some of the gaps, and changes to the tier 2 visa system are steps in the right direction - though the process will still be daunting for many small businesses. But we need a flexible system - one which maintains the frictionless movement of people - to help London meet its needs.

And here is a response to the MAC report from the CBI’s UK policy director, Matthew Fell. Like other business groups (see 12.42pm), the CBI is worried that the recommendations could increase labour shortages.

This report provides useful insights but is not a roadmap for a new system.

The findings are clear about the immigration dividend. Productivity and innovation benefit from migration, and training for UK workers increases. It finds barely any negative effects for jobs or wages for UK citizens ...

The current non-EU visa system is highly bureaucratic and cannot be extended to EU workers without major reform, so the MAC is right to recommend scrapping the tier 2 cap. But these proposals don’t go far enough.

But retaining the £30,000 salary threshold would block many essential workers from coming to the UK. Similarly, plans outlined for low-skilled workers are inadequate, and risks damaging labour shortages.

The government should now build on this evidence to pursue an open and controlled system that shows the UK remains open to the world, and make Global Britain a reality.

Lord Green, chair of Migration Watch UK, which campaigns for controls on immigration, is not impressed by the MAC report, the BBC reports.

18 Sept 201807.44 EDT

Lisa O'Carroll

The Irish government is expected to approve plans to hire 450 new customs and inspection officers for Dublin Port before the end of the year as preparations for Brexit are ramped up.

A cabinet meeting this morning will hear that 90% of food, and horticultural goods, and livestock coming to the island of Ireland comes through Dublin Port.

This will mean that inspection on agri-goods destined for Northern Ireland from Britain will be checked in Dublin Port first, helping Michel Barnier’s efforts to “de-dramatise” the Irish border issue.

Here is some business reaction to the MAC report.

From Stephen Martin, director general of the Institute of Directors

Today’s report rightly punctures some of the more negative stories around the impact of overseas workers in the UK. The conclusion in particular that migration does not impact the training of the UK-born workforce bears out the evidence from business leaders. For employers, this isn’t an either-or choice, nine out of ten of our members who employ from abroad also invest in training domestically.

Firms will cheer the proposal to remove the cap on skilled tier 2 visas, and to look in detail at ways of lowering bureaucratic burden. However, given the report’s focus on the benefits of skilled migration, the MAC’s backing of the ‘skills charge’ as a means of lowering the influx of skilled migrants seems contradictory.

From Jane Gratton, head of business environment and skills at the British Chambers of Commerce

From the perspective of businesses facing severe skills gaps, the MAC’s report gives with one hand and takes away with the other, and the recommendations are unlikely to meet the needs of all employers. Any sudden cut-off of EEA skills and labour would be concerning, if not disastrous, for firms across a wide range of regions and sectors.

We support the recommendation to scrap the tier 2 cap on skilled workers, having long called on the government to drop this non-sensical restriction on accessing the best talent from around the world. But businesses don’t just need the ‘best and brightest’ – industries such as agriculture, hospitality and social care rely on overseas labour to fill local shortages.

Businesses will be frustrated by the committee’s recommendation to extend the immigration skills charge to EEA workers, further increasing costs at a time when three-quarters of firms are reporting skills shortages. Businesses are already questioning where this money goes and how funds are used to support vocational education here at home.

Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, is in Japan for talks with his opposite number. He said he was “cautiously optimistic” that the UK and the EU would reach a deal on Brexit. He said:

I don’t think it’s brinkmanship. If we can’t come to an agreement, then the default is that we will leave the EU on the 29th of March.

So that could happen. But I don’t think it’s in anyone’s interest for that to happen. So that’s why we are cautiously optimistic that we will get a deal but there is a lot of work to do to get there.

He also urged people not to write off Theresa May, saying:

British politics is littered with the graveyards of people who have predicted the demise of Theresa May and been proved wrong. So I think she will succeed. Of course, Boris Johnson doesn’t agree with some of the policy decisions that she’s taken, but Theresa May has to speak not just for the 52% who voted for Brexit, she has to speak for 100% of the country and she has to find a way that builds bridges and unifies the country and that’s what I’m confident she will do.

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Polling conducted in constituencies and on eurosceptic issues of “potential strategic significance” to Ukip did not breach UK donation rules, an investigation has found. As the Press Association reports, the Electoral Commission said the research could have benefited the party but it did not conclude it was done to help Ukip or that they received any of the results. The watchdog therefore ruled the polling was not a donation to Ukip under UK political finance rules, adding it would re-examine the issue should new evidence come to light.

The commission’s work focused on whether Ukip took “impermissible donations” from the Alliance for Direct Democracy in Europe (ADDE), a grouping which had MEPs from several countries but with a large Ukip majority, and the Institute for Direct Democracy in Europe (IDDE). The investigation emerged after a 2016 European parliament audit found ADDE and IDDE misused more than €500,000 euros of EU funding, including on polling of interest to Ukip linked to the 2015 general election and ahead of the EU referendum, the Press Association reports.

Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, says the government should not respond to the migration advisory committee report by reducing immigration after Brexit at the expense of growth.

UPDATE: And here is Khan’s statement on the report in full.

This report is a missed opportunity to protect jobs and economic growth that are at grave risk from Theresa May’s appallingly mishandled approach to Brexit, and from a government that is only motivated by its ideological and economically illiterate migration target – regardless of the cost to real people

London’s entrepreneurialism and economic growth is partly down to the flow of ideas and people from Europe and around the world. British businesses will pay a heavy price if the government fails to protect their access to a European workforce at all skill levels in the future. Of course more must be done to give local workforces the skills needed for the jobs of the future – but responsibility for this lies squarely with this government, who have consistently failed to invest enough in education, skills and training.

Any decision by this government to prioritise reducing immigration at the expense of economic growth will damage our country for years to come.

A no-deal Brexit will make it harder for police to protect UK citizens as forces fall back on “slower, more bureaucratic” systems, one of the country’s most senior officers has warned. As the Press Association reports, Sara Thornton, chairman of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, spoke as plans were unveiled for a new unit that will oversee how forces use alternative systems if the UK crashes out if the EU in the spring. She said:

The fallbacks we’re going to have to use will be slower, will be more bureaucratic and it will make it harder for us to protect UK citizens and make it harder to protect EU citizens.

There are 40 tools that UK law enforcement may lose access to, including the European Arrest Warrant and the Schengen Information System, which was accessed 539m times by British authorities last year alone, the Press Association reports.

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As Alan Travis, the Guardian’s former home affairs editor points out, the Home Office says it will “carefully consider” the migration advisory committee recommendations before giving a substantive response.

Last week the Times’ Sam Coates reported that Theresa May was planning to use the Conservative party conference to announce strict immigrations controls after Brexit. In his story (paywall) Coates said:

Theresa May wants to announce strict immigration controls at the Tory party conference to reassure Brexiteers and steady her leadership in the face of open revolt.

Downing Street has summoned the cabinet to a special meeting on September 24, less than a week before the party gathers in Birmingham. Immigration is expected to feature during that meeting and cabinet ministers have been promised a discussion on immigration before the conference, sources told The Times ...

The migration scheme after Britain leaves is likely to end preferential access for EU citizens and could subject non-EU citizens to equal restrictions. It could involve visas for EU citizens who want to live in Britain.

There is a cap on the numbers of skilled and unskilled workers who can come from outside the EU at present, while anyone can come from within the EU. Under a global system the same cap would apply to all non-UK citizens wanting to come and live in Britain.

Mrs May and Mr Javid are united in a desire for a global migration scheme despite doubts among some cabinet colleagues, including Philip Hammond, the chancellor, and Greg Clark, the business secretary.

It is easy to see why an announcement along these lines appeals to Number 10. There is a lot of evidence to suggest Conservative activists are deeply unhappy about May’s Chequers Brexit plan. But on immigration May’s personal instincts are hardline (David Cameron used to joke that she was the only person in his cabinet who actually agreed with his target for reducing net migration) and she’s more likely to get a cheer at conference announcing this than from almost anything else.