Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has confirmed the UK government plans to review its visa program to attract a greater percentage of high-skilled workers to these shores.
With a bold vision to recruit more skilled workers from overseas to support Britain’s artificial intelligence (AI) and life sciences sectors, Reeves revealed a new immigration white paper will be published later this year as part of Labour’s push for economic growth.
Reeves spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos and went to great lengths to reiterate that Britain was “open for business”. This suggested that the current skilled worker visa system at the UK Home Office could be tweaked in the coming months.
UK Government Assess its Options on Immigration
Within a matter of days of Labour gaining power at last summer’s General Election, the new government sought to adopt a “serious” approach to immigration. They enlisted the help of the Migration Advisory Committee to draw up reports on industries especially reliant on offshore talent.
UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) has already kicked-off its transition to a new 100% digital immigration system, with new eVisas set to become the order of the day. UKVI has also insisted that sponsorship compliance was of paramount importance, adding that sponsorship was a privilege and not a “right” for overseas applicants. By Q3 2024, some 513 skilled worker sponsor licences had been revoked by UKVI through the year, surpassing the 377 licences revoked in the entirety of 2023. UKVI has intimated it will continue to take a tough stance on sponsor compliance in 2025 and beyond.
Between April and December 2024, the latest statistics showed that 50,900 main applicants for skilled worker visas were handled. Securing an initial visa to live and work in the UK remains a daunting task. Individuals can find the application process time-consuming, which is where immigration solicitors London based like Reiss Edwards, or elsewhere in the UK can prove invaluable. These firms have decades of experience in dealing with the Home Office and securing the immigration status overseas professionals need to land work in Britain and start a new life in the UK.
The current skilled worker visa system requires applicants to be securing a job which meets the salary threshold of £38,700 or £30,960 depending if the role is on the immigration salary list.
Big Business Likely to Have its Say on Overseas Recruitment
Government ministers are set to launch consultations with business leaders across the UK about how best to tweak the current framework to attract more talent to the British Isles. Ministers are also expected to enforce British diplomats based abroad to promote the benefits of living and working in the UK as a skilled professional or entrepreneur.
Ms Reeves was present at Davos alongside the government’s business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, who also attempted to promote the benefits of doing business with the UK. Reynolds also spent time discussing the prospect of tariffs on UK exports from the US, insisting that such a move wasn’t in America’s best interests since the Americans didn’t have a trade deficit with Britain. In fact, due to Britain being a largely service-based economy, it was the other way round.
For further reading around this subject, be sure to read:
· Find out about the threat of stagflation in the UK economy for 2025.
· Learn more about the eVisa process and the documents it’s replacing.