Immigration policies are hugely relevant to London, because one third of the UK’s foreign-born population lives in the capital, over 40 per cent of Londoners were born overseas, and migrants are crucial to the workings of the city, both as a society of nine million people and as an economic engine on which the whole nation depends. It feels a little weird to read the government’s immigration White Paper with a view to working out how much damage to London it might do.
Starting with the better news, Sir Keir Starmer said in his speech that “Britain must compete for the best talent in the world in science, in technology, in healthcare”, stressing that pulling up the drawbridge to let nobody in would “without question” be a bad thing.
The government has already launched a scheme to recruit such talent from around the global, with much of it wanting out of Donald Trump’s USA. London, a “world city” crucible of life science and green tech, will hopefully remain an option considered by plenty. A promise to raise the qualification required for being granted a skilled worker visa to degree level shouldn’t adversely effect that sector – not that it’s exactly cheap.
Salary thresholds for most types of jobs – the amount they have to pay in order for a migrant to be allowed in to the UK to do them – will also rise in an attempt to reduce low-skilled numbers. The minimum figure was hiked just a year ago by the Tories from £26,000 a year to £38,700. As pay in London tends to be higher than elsewhere, the capital might be affected less than other regions. Even so, vital parts of the city’s economy will be concerned.
In construction, where skills shortages have been a problem in London for at least ten years, a dwindling domestic workforce has long obliged it to recruit internationally, and that’s been getting harder too, thanks to Brexit and previous changes to visa terms. A “temporary shortage list” will allow some scope for flexibility but that will depend on employees looking abroad for workers showing they are also “committed to playing their part in increasing recruitment from the domestic workforce”. London’s massive, government-set housing target is hardly looking easier to hit.
London’s hospitality industries, integral to the success of the West End and other parts of town, will be anxious, too. The last bunch of Tory immigration rule changes were thought by City Hall “likely to impact approximately 250,000 hospitality workers in London”. Alongside that, around 40 per cent of arts, entertainment and recreation jobs in London – equating to about 40,000 people – are held by people born outside the UK, a far higher percentage than in the UK as a whole.
Then there’s higher education. Almost 30 per cent of all UK foreign students are in London. Its universities, heavily reliant on their fees and already dismayed by actions by the Conservatives, are now digesting Labour’s proposals. These include reducing the period for which graduates can remain in the UK after their studies from two years to 18 months, and making it harder for universities to sponsor migrant students.
For example, “sponsoring institutions” will have to “demonstrate that they are considering local impacts when taking decisions on international recruitment,” the White Paper says. It also has a section dedicated to short-term English language courses, lasting for between six and 11 months, which the Home Office fears is being abused as a route to entering the asylum system.
The alarm has been raised about the White Paper saying the government “will explore introducing a levy on higher education provider income from international students, to be reinvested into the higher education and skills system”. Liz Hutchinson, chief executive of London Higher, which represents the capital’s higher education institutions, puts it this way: “The question isn’t whether the UK can afford to welcome international students. It’s whether it can afford not to. Anything that signals to potential applicants that the UK isn’t a place for them puts at risk ambitions to shore up our economy, to be a world leader in research and development and to deepen the UK’s influence on the global stage.”
The plan to end recruitment of care workers from abroad has attracted much attention and concern. The White Paper says the last government’s approach “directly encouraged” care organisations “to bring in far more staff from abroad while still cutting support for training places in the UK” and claims vacancies in the sector’s workforce are not due to a shortage of skilled workers in the country but to “historic levels of poor pay and poor terms and conditions”.
The White Paper says a future fair pay agreement will address that problem, encouraging more recruitment from people already here. But who will pay? London, with its high cost of living, has just over 250,000 adult social care jobs, of which only just over half are held by British nationals – the smallest proportion of any English region. Will fees have to increase? Many care homes are owned by local authorities, and many of London’s boroughs are in dire financial straits.
The government is trying to reconcile objectives that are in tension, if not in conflict: the political goal of pleasing voters who want to see falls in migration, and the economic one of increasing growth. The remedy the PM is proposing for this chafing is a boost in domestic job recruitment, to which employers as well as the state must contribute.
That isn’t out of line with objectives of the London Growth Plan, put together by London Councils and City Hall, which lists “a pro-growth migration policy that is linked to skills” as a move that would “materially boost growth in London”. An “employer-led skills system” is also recommended.
These are placed in the context of Brexit “leading to labour shortages in key sectors such as construction and hospitality”. The plan sets out an “inclusive talent strategy” which London government, national government and “key partners” including employers, further education colleges, unions and others all play a part. Putting that strategy into effect looks even more urgent now.
As for the politics of it all, work on the White Paper has been going on for months and Starmer went out of his way this morning to insist that it is not a response to Reform UK doing well in the recent local elections. “I am doing this because it is right, because it is fair, and because it is what I believe in,” he said. But the results of 1 May confirmed what opinion polls have been saying for months. And Starmer’s language at certain points could hardly have been more attuned to what some Reform supporters want to hear.
“Migration is part of Britain’s national story,” he said, invoking “the great rebuilding of this country after the war”, and he said he celebrated our “diverse nation”. He warned, however: “When people come to our country, they should also commit to integration, to learning our language, and our system should actively distinguish between those that do and those that don’t. I think that’s fair.” What was more, in his view, a diverse nation made such rules “even more important” because “without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers”.
Saying things like that happens to create risks for Starmer, as does the White Paper itself: the measures in the document risk hampering London’s economy just when the country needs it most; the tone in which they’ve been presented risks validating Reform’s impossible Trumpist demands rather than drawing their sting, and risks further increasing the much bigger flow of support away from Starmer’s party towards the Liberal Democrats and the Greens – a trend which a new opinion poll suggests London is not immune to.
Coming soon is the promised re-set of relations with the European Union, including closer trade ties and the possibility of a revived youth mobility scheme, something Sir Sadiq Khan has long called for. London and Labour alike need some positive results from next week’s summit. Without them, the latest migration curbs and all they are seen to stand for could do serious harm to both.
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