Temporary cap on non-EU migrants announced
Updated on 28 June 2010
Home Secretary Theresa May announces plans to limit the number of skilled migrant workers that come to the UK, telling Channel 4 News this is not a "tweak", but neither is it exactly momentous, writes Political Editor Gary Gibbon.
Home Secretary Theresa May said today the government is setting a temporary cap, effective from 19 July, to avoid a rush of applicants trying to beat the introduction of a permanent limit next year.
The new temporary cap covers skilled and highly skilled workers from outside the EU. Overall, the government is reducing the number of people who can enter the country through these routes by 1,300, or 5 per cent on last year, although some categories of migrant, including elite sportspeople, are excluded from the limit.
The government is also tightening slightly the points-based criteria needed for a highly skilled non-EU worker to qualify to enter the country.
More on immigration from Channel 4 News FactCheck:
- The annual immigration cap and the EU
- Stats watchdog ticks off PM over immigration figures
- Does number of Europeans here equal Brits abroad?
- Do four out of five immigrants come from EU?
"Immigration has been good for UK but uncontrolled immigration isn't," Home Secretary Theresa May told Channel 4 News.
She said the cap - a Tory pre-election promise - is only one part of the government's approach to cutting migration levels.
"We've already announced tighter controls for people coming into the UK to marry, a requirement for them to be able to speak English to a certain level," she said. "There are other areas that we will look at in future like the issue of students coming into the UK.
"But we're clear that our overall aim is to bring net migration down to the tens of thousands a year rather than the hundreds of thousands a year it was under the Labour government."
In a statement to MPs, Mrs May said: "It is this Government's aim to reduce the level of net migration back down to the levels of the 1990s - tens of thousands each year not hundreds of thousands.
"It is important that the Government takes full account of the views of business and other interested sectors.
"We want to ensure that we can properly weigh the economic considerations agains the wider social and public service implications."
The Home Secretary said she would make an announcement on the permanent cap by the end of the year.
Not a tweak, but not momentous: Gary Gibbon on the immigration cap
This is not a "tweak", Theresa May says, on the temporary cap on tier one work visas, writes Gary Gibbon. Neither is it exactly momentous (though one former Labour minister admitted to me the coalition had to have some sort of temporary cap to avoid a "closing-down sale" scenario).
On the bigger picture of the annual cap, the government is consulting on whether to raise English language levels for tier two work visas and look at whether work permits should be biased towards companies that are providing private health insurance for workers they want to bring into the country.
Former Home Secretary Alan Johnson says that's "madness" as the UK competes in a globalised economy and wants to attract foreign companies who want to bring some of their workforce from abroad. Adding costs to that risks driving them away.
It was also clear in a briefing with the home secretary and her team that the government is hoping that Germany and other EU countries who opted for tight transitional arrangements on new EU member labour migration will start taking more of the strain (or benefit) of eastern European workers in the years ahead as those transitional controls on migration end.
- Read Gary Gibbon's full analysis
Student visas are not restricted by the temporary cap. Neither are intra-company transfers - where international companies move workers to the UK.
The government can not cap the number of migrants from inside the EU, who May said today made up 52 per cent of immigrants according to the most recent figures.
The government is consulting businesses over the next three months on how a permanent cap should work.
The independent migration advisory committee is also consulting separately on where the limit should be set.
The government's advisory body has been tasked with considering both the economic and social impacts of migration, such as the effects on housing and health services.
Senior Conservative Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, has already attacked the idea of a "crude cap" as "very detrimental" to the free flow of workers.
Net inward migration - the number of people coming into the country for more than a year, minus the number leaving - fell from 233,000 in 2007 to 163,000 in 2008. Provisional statistics suggest it fell again last year.
'Brightest and best'
Immigration minister Damian Green told Channel 4 News: "What we want to do is to set up a permanent system that will cope with the economic recovery that we all hope to see over the next few years, so that what Britain can do is attract the brightest and the best, benefit from the immigration we need, but not have the strain that's been put on our services by the sheer scale of immigration that we've seen over the last ten years where it's been, net migration has been running at as much as 240,000 in one year.
"There are two simplistic approaches to immigration. One is to say 'let's not have any of it because it causes problems', and the other is to say 'it helps us economically, let's bring everyone in'. And they're both wrong.
"What we need is a much more focused way of saying 'these are the people we want, these are the people who can add to our society economically and culturally, but also to say we simply can't carry on with immigration at the levels it has been at for the past few years because it causes the problems we all saw."
