Businesses recruiting workers should rent British employees first
Businesses looking for new staff will have to put British workers first under ‘non-negotiable’ curbs on migrant labour, a senior minister said yesterday.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride urged firms that rely heavily on foreign workers to ‘recruit Britain’ to fill their jobs.
Mr Stride said visa reforms brought in this year would slash net migration by 300,000 a year, presenting a ‘recruitment challenge’ for sectors which rely heavily on migrant labour such as hospitality, construction and care. But he said that, unlike in the past, the Government would not ease visa restrictions if firms struggle to fill vacancies.
Speaking to the Mail, Mr Stride said ministers were ‘utterly determined’ to cut migration levels – and warned that the clampdown on visas was ‘non-negotiable’.
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Mel Stride is seen in Westminster earlier this month
Mr Stride said visa reforms brought in this year would slash net migration by 300,000 a year, presenting a ‘recruitment challenge’ for sectors which rely heavily on migrant labour (stock image)
The minister said restrictions on visas for students and the dependants of care workers, coupled with a higher minimum salary threshold, were likely to cut migration levels to around half of those last year.
He added: ‘That’s a quantum step down. So my task now is to work with businesses and make sure that what we do is in those sectors where labour markets are tight, and they’ve relied on that flow of net migration in the past, we have the tools to make sure that we ‘recruit Britain’ and that people appreciate that the solution is often much closer than they think.’
A new ministerial taskforce has been set up to oversee the development of recruitment initiatives for hard-hit sectors.
It is hoped it will repeat the success of a 2021 scheme to plug a gap in the numbers of HGV drivers.
Mr Stride did not rule out a push to train up ex-convicts to work in areas such as hospitality as foreign labour dries up, saying: ‘We have to think very entrepreneurially. We have to think… of things that we can do quickly, that have an impact.’
He said it was a ‘huge opportunity for the thousands of jobseekers within our domestic workforce to move into roles that have previously been filled by overseas workers’. He added: ‘I see no reason why a British worker cannot be a care worker.’
