The UK’s crackdown on legal migration won’t affect the tech industry – despite it facing a long-running skills shortage – the government’s tech minister has claimed.
Speaking to UKTN, Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy Saqib Bhatti said that despite recent policies from the Home Office designed to reduce migration into the UK, the government remains “committed” to encouraging foreign workers to support the UK tech industry.
“When it comes to legal migration, [the home secretary] was very clear, the numbers have been too high,” Bhatti said.
Despite this, Bhatti claimed that the tech department was “leading the charge” on “making sure we were still…attracting the best and brightest people from across the world”.
In December, Home Secretary James Cleverly introduced several measures to reduce migration into the UK, including raising the income threshold for overseas workers from £26,200 to £38,700, which is significantly higher than the national average salary of around £33,000.
Bhatti told UKTN: “The numbers for legal migration are too high, and the Home Secretary has taken those steps. But this approach has to be tailored towards helping our economy thrive and the tech sector clearly has a need for talent, and we try to address that.”
The Home Office’s Global Talent Visa scheme, which has been administered by Tech Nation for the past decade, has proven incredibly popular for entrepreneurs. More than 5,000 people have used it to work in the UK tech sector, with a quarter of those startup founders.
Michelle Donelan, the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, recently told the UKTN Podcast that the UK must not “rely on the crutch of immigration” to grow its digital skills base.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt similarly said in his recent Spring Budget speech that economic growth couldn’t “come from unlimited migration”.
Global Tech Advocates founder Russ Shaw, however, pointed out the chancellor’s goal of creating the “next Silicon Valley” would be impossible without embracing international workers.
“Overseas workers have a vital role to play right now in plugging the nationwide skills gaps currently hampering the sector’s growth,” Shaw said.
