Unlock free Digest editor
Roula Khalaf, editor of FT, chooses her favorite story in this weekly newsletter.
Government officials do not fully understand how the main path to workers coming to Britain or who contributes to the economy, according to independent public consumption guardians, is not fully understood.
The home office did not conduct an assessment of the impact before expanding the qualified route of the workers’ visa to include jobs for the input levels of 2022, according to a state audit report published on Monday.
The decision was one of the key factors that launched an increase in net immigration in the UK, and health and care consists of 158,300 of 509,100 applications for qualified Visa 2023.
The high occupation of the route, which opened in 2020, when Brexit ended freely movement with the EU, helped companies employ and increase tax revenues.
This also led to more people permanently remain in the UK, more workers who brought family and more than 5,000 people who came to qualified workers’ visas who applied for asylum 2024.
However, neither did the registry office, which leads the government immigration policy, completely evaluated the consequences for different sectors before in the spring of 2024 he re -tightened the rules, introducing a ban on guardians who bring family and higher salaries for other qualified workers.
The Whitehall Department “does not fully understand how the route is used, its contribution to the economy or affects the shortages of skills in different sectors and regions,” Nao said, adding that he failed to control what happened to people when they expired.
Watchdog report comes as ministers are preparing to publish white papers, which over time will further reduce the immigration associated with work, connecting the use of a visual system with efforts to train and employ young people born in the UK.
However, any sudden suppression of numbers is likely to be fiercely challenging companies in employment sectors.
In addition to confirming the intention of reducing the overall immigration, the Ministers of Government have committed to ensuring high technological sectors considered key to economic growth, they will be able to hire qualified workers from abroad.
Since the rules were tightened last year, applications for visas with qualified workers have already halved, with a total value of only 252,700 in 2024.
Cap was mostly in care – still sector suffering chronic staff shortage – But Nao said that the higher salary thresholds are also appreciated by veterinarians in the public sector, butchers who work in kamattoirs and architects, among other professions.
The changes to the rules are not the only reason that the number of qualified workers so sharply declined since 2023. The home office also looks at the applications more closely, recalling a visa sponsorship license of nearly 1500 employers in 2024, and rejecting the fifth of the 2024 application, compared to 2021.
It is estimated that 34,000 care workers were affected by the recall of employers licenses, leaving them without a job and the risk of deportation, unless they find a new sponsor.
However, Nao said that the registry office still had limited information on the measure in which employers use workers or abuse of visas – partly because it is not close enough with HM revenues and customs, the tax agency or the Health and Social Welfare Department.
The home office generated around £ 438 million in visas of qualified workers in 2023-24, which is far ahead of the cost of keeping a system of £ 109 million, according to estimates of NA.
The guard said that the department should cooperate with the Government Advisory Committee on Migration, as an IS -supervised bodies, industrial strategy and policy of labor market, so that future changes to the rules would be better informed.
The Mac, whose resources were fixed in the latest changes, was already set to publish the evaluation of skillful workers’ routes later this year.
The home office did not immediately respond to the commentary request.
