James Cleverly's immigration crackdown is about politics, not the national interest – Scotsman comment

The UK Government sees reducing immigration as a good in its own right, while apparently ignoring the damage this will do

Amid the uproar over the record net immigration figure of 745,000 for last year, some appear to have forgotten there were particular reasons why the number was so high: such as the Ukraine war and communist tyranny in Hong Kong. There were also large numbers of foreign students at the UK’s world-renowned universities and people who came on working visas to help plug gaps in sectors experiencing vacancy crises, like health and social care.

Yesterday, James Cleverly declared “enough is enough” as he outlined several measures that he said would cut the numbers by about 300,000. Skilled workers will need to earn £38,700 from next spring to come to this country – up from about £26,000 – with the Home Secretary declaring “we will stop immigration undercutting the salary of British workers”.

He added that health and social care workers will be exempt from this requirement “so we can continue to bring in the healthcare workers on which our care sector and NHS rely”. However, care workers will be banned from bringing family dependants and the annual ‘immigration surcharge’ to use the NHS will go up from £624 to £1,035 – both disincentives for those considering coming to work here for relatively low wages.

Another problem with Cleverly’s plans is that, according to the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, a review of 15 years of studies found that immigration "had little or no impact on... unemployment” and “small” effects on wages. For example, a 2022 study found immigration between 1994 and 2016 reduced the earnings of UK-born workers on the lowest 20 per cent of wages by about 0.5p a year.

It is better if job vacancies in the UK are filled by people already living here. However, putting obstacles in the way of overseas workers despite prolonged, serious shortages will only damage the economy – eventually, unfilled jobs tend to disappear – and increase the considerable pressure on existing NHS and social care staff.

However, for this government, with an election looming, reducing immigration has become a good in its own right, with the damaging, real-world consequences deemed inconsequential in comparison.