It is a topic Rishi Sunak would no doubt prefer to avoid: the record-breaking jump in net immigration – soon to be revealed in official figures – which is already causing increasingly fractious rows within his cabinet.
Even a trip to the G7 summit in Japan was not far enough, with reporters on the flight asking directly whether the prime minister intended to stick to Boris Johnson’s 2019 manifesto pledge to bring net immigration down.
Sunak’s response was, at best, evasive, and included the suggestion that he blamed the rise in foreign workers – a leading factor in driving up figures – on Boris Johnson’s administration.
“I’ve inherited some numbers, I want to bring the numbers down,” he said. Pushed as to whether he stood by Johnson’s pledge, he refused to do so, saying: “I’ve said I do want to bring legal migration down. I think illegal migration is undoubtedly the country’s priority, and you can see all the work I’m putting into that as well. But on legal migration as well we are committed to bringing those numbers down.”
His refusal to reiterate Johnson’s promise has done little to calm a briefing war that has raged all week between members of Sunak’s cabinet over whether the UK should issue more visas for foreign staff in industries short of workers.
Sources from the Treasury, the Department for Education and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have argued for more workers from overseas to be allowed to enter the UK. In the opposing camp, Suella Braverman has publicly claimed that “mass” migration is “unsustainable”, and has called for cuts in the number of visas offered to foreign workers and students.
As the home secretary she has proposed a number of visa restrictions on workers, students and their families, but sources close to her say that none have so far been signed off.
As the arguments rumble on, the Office for National Statistics is preparing to publish the latest net immigration figures, which are expected to exceed 700,000, up from 504,000 last year. In 2019, when Johnson made his election pledge to cut the numbers, the total was 271,000.
In a call to her core supporters, widely interpreted as groundwork for a future leadership attempt, Braverman said work visas should be cut and thousands of Britons should be trained to drive trucks, work in the meat industry and gather crops, rather than employers relying on foreign workers.
She told the National Conservatism conference on Monday: “We need to get overall immigration numbers down. And we mustn’t forget how to do things for ourselves.”
Braverman, who said last year she would like to see net immigration return to the “tens of thousands”, said the government must fulfil the promise of Brexit and control UK borders.
Close observers of migration figures say Brexit caused labour shortages across many industries.
When the withdrawal agreement came into force on 31 January 2020, it ended free movement between the UK and the EU, meaning EU citizens could no longer work in the UK without a visa.
A report issued last year by the Migration Observatory, at the University of Oxford, said the end of free movement had “exacerbated recruitment issues faced by UK employers”. These were also worsened by the Covid pandemic.
It said industries that relied most heavily on EU workers, such as hospitality, transport, construction and agriculture, had been hit particularly hard and had struggled to adjust to new immigration rules making many posts ineligible for overseas recruitment.
Johnson’s government responded to labour shortages by reducing the income and skills thresholds for skilled migrant visas, and expanding the opportunities for student migrants to bring family members and to work after their studies were completed.
The report said: “Employers in some industries, such as agriculture, have been able to switch from EU to non-EU workers after the end of free movement, but in most low-wage industries, the immigration system does not permit them to do this.
“Some shortages are transient and resolve of their own accord over time, although the process of ‘adjustment’ may be disruptive for employers who cannot reduce their labour needs through alternatives, such as automation. This has led to calls for work visa schemes to mitigate the impacts for employers.”
According to Madeleine Sumption, the head of the Migration Observatory, there is no right way to decide which low- or middle-wage jobs should be eligible for work visas.
“The government chose to make private-sector roles, like butchers and chefs, eligible for work visas, and it can reverse that decision if it wants to. The overall impacts of this for the UK economy would probably be relatively small. Indeed, some industries with lots of middle-skilled jobs, such as construction, already make relatively low use of work visas,” she said.
Care workers were by far the main cohort of the increase in visas issued to foreign workers last year, when 268,000 were provided, almost twice as many as the last pre-pandemic year of 2019.
In December 2021 it was announced that care workers would be added to the UK’s shortage occupation list, which makes it easier for certain industries experiencing labour shortages to recruit from overseas.
The move was in response to pressures in the sector caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the decision of many EU workers to return home during lockdown and not return.
It allowed care homes to recruit overseas workers paid £10.75 an hour – just above the minimum wage. The number of foreign workers coming to the UK to work in the health and care sector last year was almost two-and-a-half times higher than the year before. The number of health and care visas issued last year, 77,000, was the highest for any sector.
Sumption said: “The government has quite a lot of control over this sector, since it funds training places and sets, or otherwise directly influences, pay. But health and care employers have faced significant shortages of workers and have become increasingly reliant on overseas workers. The reasons for this are complex, and include low pay in social care and insufficient training and retention to meet NHS workforce demand.
“If the government wants to reduce overseas recruitment, it has policy levers it could pull – at a cost, of course – such as addressing the funding crisis in social care.”
Ministers are waiting to see whether Sunak’s reluctance to back Johnson’s policy represents a fundamental shift in policy towards overall immigration. The home secretary’s team claims that her immigration policies still chime with Sunak’s. It remains to be seen, however, whether he is willing to continue to back her and risk further splits with other cabinet colleagues.
