Labour Vows to Curb Hiring of Foreign Workers, Focus More on UK Talent

Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer delivers a speech at the office of UK Finance in central London, on Feb. 27, 2023. Stefan Rousseau/PA Media

The Labour Party has promised to impose restrictions on the hiring of foreign workers and focus instead on developing domestic talent, as the opposition party toughens its stance on immigration ahead of the next general election.

According to data released last week by the Office of National Statistics, net migration to the UK hit a new record high of 606,000 in 2022, driven by people from non-EU countries arriving for work, study, and humanitarian reasons.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak acknowledged that the numbers are “too high” and said he wants to “bring them down.”

But Labour blamed the rise in net migration on the government’s alleged failure to tackle a skills shortage.

Dependence on ‘Cheap Labour’

Writing in The Sun on Sunday, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said: “Hidden in this week’s record-high immigration numbers was a shocking fact: Work visas issued to foreign nationals have doubled since 2019.

“Because of the government’s failure to train hundreds of thousands of our young people or get people back to work, the economy is dependent on low pay and cheap labour.”

Starmer said that hiring overseas workers on cheap wages is “no substitute for a proper plan,” adding that the Labour Party—like the British public—wants “immigration to come down.”

He suggested that he would focus on apprenticeships as “a ticket to a better future,” and stressed the need to “end the culture that encourages businesses to hire from abroad rather than train people here.”

It comes after the party announced last week that it would scrap rules allowing firms to pay 20 percent below the going rate to hire overseas workers for jobs on the shortage occupation list, such as health care, engineering, and IT.

The measures would form part of its proposed reform of the points-based system to create a “fair” but controlled system, Labour said.

Time Limits on Labour Imports

Starmer is not the only Labour lawmaker talking about immigration in this week’s Sunday papers.

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said Labour would impose time limits on the hiring of overseas workers in shortage occupations.

Cooper said the party believes the measure would give an incentive to companies to train more British staff.

The party would use a strengthened Migration Advisory Committee (MAC)—which provides independent advice to the government—to guide on appropriate “timescales” for importing labour, she suggested.

The Labour frontbencher said: “At the moment, occupations stay on the shortage occupation list, and they rarely ever come off.

“There may be some occupations where you’re talking about really rare international skills where there may always need to be overseas recruitment, but there may be other areas where actually this is about a lack of training here in the UK and it shouldn’t be on the shortage occupation list.”

At the same time, Labour would link the MAC to its new planned skills body—Skills England—to make sure training plans are developed to fill shortages with homegrown workers.

Medical Staff

Meanwhile, in an op-ed for the Mail on Sunday, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting criticised the “over-reliance” on overseas recruitment within the National Health Service (NHS).

He wrote: “A majority of work visas handed out last year were to people coming to staff our health and care sectors. Last week, the Nursing and Midwifery Council revealed half of new recruits into the NHS were trained abroad—the highest proportion in more than 30 years.”

Streeting added: “The Conservatives have lost control of immigration. The next Labour government will choose home-grown talent over an ever-greater reliance on recruiting from overseas.”

PA Media contributed to this report.