Unemployed Britons will be trained to do jobs normally taken by overseas workers to cut net migration, the Shadow Home Secretary has said as she unveiled Labour’s plans to curb Britain’s reliance on foreign labour.
Yvette Cooper told The Sunday Telegraph that a new cross-government drive will be launched aimed at training up the unemployed to fill roles in sectors such as care, construction and engineering which she said are currently highly reliant on migrant workers.
She said that the current system, which gives businesses a 20 per cent discount for overseas recruitment, “basically incentivises” employers to recruit from abroad rather than up-skilling domestic workers, despite the nation’s worklessness crisis.
Reducing net migration is a key issue for both Labour and the Conservatives, with both parties pledging to reduce it after it hit a record high of 745,000 in December 2022, nearly three times the pre-Brexit average.
Ms Cooper said: “Net migration has trebled under the Conservatives and over the last five years really, since the last election.
“And the Office for National Statistics has been clear that it is being driven by work migration - that is now the biggest cause. We believe net migration needs to come down.”
Committee’s role to be strengthened
The ONS revised its net migration figures in light of “unexpected patterns” in migrant behaviour - namely that they were staying in the UK longer.
It estimates that net migration stood at a provisional 672,000 in the year to June 2023, nearly three times the pre-Brexit average of 200,000 to 250,000 a year, blowing apart the Government’s 2019 manifesto pledge to bring down the overall rate of net migration from its then level of 226,000.
Under Labour’s proposals, the role of the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) - which advises the Home Office on which occupations have a shortage of workers and makes recommendations about which types of foreign worker visas should be issued - will be strengthened.
The committee will work with national skills bodies as well as the industrial strategy council as part of a new “tripartite framework”, using its research to also make recommendations about which new training courses are needed to bolster the number of British workers in particular sectors.
Ms Cooper said that over the past five years, the Government has been overseeing an “unregulated, free market approach” to migration, where skills shortages among British workers have not been tackled.
“They haven’t had proper controls in the system,” she said. “And they’ve not only failed to tackle employers who were exploiting migration to undercut wages, but they’ve also actively encouraged this undercutting by having the 20 per cent discount on overseas recruitment.
“This is one of the things that we had argued for some time that should be changed and the Conservatives have finally agreed it should change.”
Worklessness crisis
The move to retrain the unemployed comes amid a growing worklessness crisis, with the number of those classed as “economically inactive”, meaning they are neither in a job nor looking for one, ballooning to 9.25 million post-pandemic.
Most of that increase can be attributed to a huge spike in long-term sickness, which has added 717,000 people to the benefits bill since the start of 2020.
Young people are driving the trend, with people in their early 20s now more likely to be signed off than 40-year-olds - often with mental health problems.
“We know that there is a real issue about the number of people who are now out of the labour market altogether,” Ms Cooper said.
“Some of that is about people who are on long term waiting lists, NHS waiting lists and so we obviously want to bring NHS waiting lists down. And some of it is people who do need additional support in order to get back into the labour market.”
The announcement comes as the Shadow Education Secretary said that businesses are “crying out for help to tackle skills shortages”.
Labour has pledged to reform the existing apprenticeship levy, a charge on firms which have an annual wages bill of more than £3 million.
In a campaign announcement fronted by Bridget Phillipson, the party promised that a new growth and skills levy would give businesses greater flexibility to invest in training courses that meet their needs, as well as “turbocharging investment in skills for the future”.
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