Our new report with PwC, calling for a new fair and managed immigration system for the UK, reached over 700 stakeholders across Westminster and Whitehall.

Our package of recommendations would ensure the right controls are in place for managing immigration more effectively whilst enabling the UK to access the skills our economy and local services need at all levels.

We’ve been highlighting the contribution of our international colleagues to the economy in a series of videos, with the report also featured in the FT and Evening Standard. 

We’ve been actively briefing MPs, Peers, special advisers and civil servants in the Home Office and other government departments, ahead of the imminent Immigration White Paper.

As part of this campaign, we joined forces with the Mayor of London and other business groups in a letter to the Home Secretary, calling for the salary threshold to be reset from the current £30,000 to the level of the London Living Wage. This would ensure businesses could continue to access both essential lower-skilled and highly skilled workers. We will continue to lobby stakeholders in Parliament and Government over the coming months, working in collaboration with allies including NHS Employers, National Farmers Union and trade bodies representing sectors including construction, food and retail, throughout the White Paper process and into the Immigration Bill, expected in the early part of 2019.

Overhauling the current system

With two in five of London’s workforce originally coming from outside the country, immigration powers the economy, across all sectors and at all skills levels. In the capital around 1.8m working people were born overseas, together contributing a net additional £83bn – more than enough to cover the UK’s housing and transport budgets. Our report sets out a new pro-growth immigration approach to ensure the UK can access the people and skills it needs from around the globe. Our recommendations include: 

• scrapping the net migration target; 
• a shake-up of the existing skilled work visa route (Tier 2) to ensure employers can hire workers with a broad range of skills from the EU and beyond;
• re-setting the salary threshold from the current £30,000 to the level of the London Living Wage (£20,155); 
• a review of the shortage occupation list to better align it with economic need, including the UK’s Industrial Strategy; 
• creating a new independent ​‘Office for Migration Responsibility’ which would also ensure more accurate data on the numbers of people coming in and out of the country; and
• stripping out unnecessary bureaucracy and moving towards a digitised, paper-less immigration system. 

This sits alongside action to upskill UK workers, including business-led investment in apprenticeships, T‑levels and training. 

Read the report here.