Report suggests raising minimum salary for Tier-2 skilled workers might help government achieve immigration target (14 August 2015)

A report by the Home Office Migration Advisory Committee has proposed new rules on the recruitment of workers from overseas, which could prevent British firms from recruiting skilled Tier-2 workers from non-EU countries.

The committee was set up by the Home Office to implement changes to immigration rules – and has set out plans under which UK companies would have to raise the minimum salary paid to skilled workers from outside the EU. Currently the minimum wage for skilled non-EU workers is £20,800 for most jobs.

Tier-2 workers include science researchers, financial services staff, medical staff and engineers. Industry has been calling for the government to make it easier to recruit STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) professionals and recent graduates – but if the proposals become law, up to 40,000 skilled migrants from non-EU countries could be blocked from working in the UK, the Evening Standard reports.

The committee’s chairman Professor David Metcalfe has said there is no evidence that skilled workers from overseas are “undercutting” UK professionals – but a knock-on effect of the rules might be that British firms would recruit fewer skilled workers from overseas to avoid the minimum wage restriction.

The report suggests several options, however – one of which is to reduce the number of skilled workers recruited from outside the EU by 23,990, which would result in a further 13,371 professionals from outside the EU already working in Britain losing their right to work in the UK.

This would amount to a total of 36, 361 fewer skilled workers from non-EU countries working in the UK.

Prof Metcalfe is urging caution before the rules are changed – the final decision lies with ministers.

“Those who would be excluded would include medical practitioners, design engineers, secondary teachers, electrical engineers and science professionals – mainly university researchers,” Prof Metcalfe said.

The committee has said that the current minimum salary for Tier-2 workers is too low because it was set six years ago. The report also says that tougher rules on Tier-2 workers are justified.

However, industry is warning that the changes and restrictions on non-EU professionals working in Britain could harm UK growth. The report includes a warning from accountancy giant PWC that some firms might be forced to relocate overseas if restrictions on Tier-2 workers became law.

Some universities have also warned that the changes might make it more difficult for the UK to attract “global talent” to study and train in Britain – many overseas graduates choose to settle in the UK after graduation, but entrepreneur and inventor Sir James Dyson has called for the “best and brightest” engineering graduates to be handed work visas automatically at their graduation ceremony to prevent the skills Britain has trained being lost to other countries.

However, the report concludes that raising the minimum salary for skilled workers from outside the EU might enable the government to achieve its aim of reducing migration.

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