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on July 15, 2024
Read Time: 8 Minutes
It may not exactly be a shock according to the polls in the run-up, but it is nonetheless a result that promises to upend the UK political landscape; the Sir Keir Starmer-led Labour Party has scored an emphatic majority in the general election, winning 411 seats in the House of Commons.
By contrast, the governing Conservative Party scored a mere 121 seats, while other parties such as the Liberal Democrats, Reform UK, and the Green Party achieved eye-catching performances.
However, with the State Opening of Parliament and the King’s Speech – the Starmer ministry’s first – rapidly looming on Wednesday 17th July, the new Government is swiftly proceeding with its work to “change Britain”. What, however, will this look like as far as immigration policy is concerned?
A logical starting point in any analysis of the new Labour Government’s approach to immigration, is consideration of the pledges made in the party’s election manifesto.
With regard to the points-based immigration and sponsorship systems, the party has vowed to control and manage the recent historically high levels of net migration, to lessen dependency on workers from abroad. Its related commitments have included:
The section of the manifesto outlining the party’s fiscal plans also indicates that application fees will be waived for veterans from outside the UK who have served in the British forces for a minimum of four years.
Although levels of migration to the UK have been on a generally upward climb since the mid-1990s, there has been a particularly high jump in the net migration statistics over the last few years. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimated long-term net migration to be 685,000 in the year ending December 2023, compared to 764,000 in the year ending December 2022.
During the election campaign, Mr Starmer said it was essential for the 685,000 figure to come down further, declaring that his party would achieve this if it triumphed in the election. He pledged at the time to “control our borders and make sure British businesses are helped to hire Brits first.”
One way in which the party has proposed to accomplish this, is by improving the training of British workers in order to lessen the country’s dependence on migrants in the workforce. Labour had stated that if it won power, it would pass a new law requiring different parts of the Government to draw up skills improvement plans in sectors that presently see high migration.
Intriguingly, the now-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has rejected the notion of setting specific targets or caps for reducing net migration. She has argued that declining to set a target is “sensible” due to the Conservatives having “discredited the whole system” by missing past targets.
Ms Cooper has also highlighted the continuing need for migrant workers – such as in social care. Furthermore, she has said that other factors will produce variations in the immigration numbers “from one year to another”, citing the recent examples of the pandemic and the UK’s decision to take in refugees from the war in Ukraine.
Nonetheless, the Home Secretary has also indicated that she expects net migration to fall “swiftly” with Labour in office. The now-Prime Minister was emphatic in saying to The Sun on Sunday during the campaign: “Mark my words, a future Labour Government will bring down net migration.”
A flagship immigration policy of the outgoing Conservative Government – announced under then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson in April 2022, and continued through his successors Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak – had been a proposal to send certain people seeking asylum in the UK to the Republic of Rwanda.
The idea behind the initiative had been that those migrants’ asylum claims would be decided by the Rwandan Government, and that if they were successful in their claim, they would be granted asylum in Rwanda, instead of in the UK.
The scheme had been designed as a response to the increasing numbers of unauthorised Channel crossings by migrants in small boats. However, the policy faced barriers, not least the UK Supreme Court declaring it unlawful in November 2023 on the grounds that Rwanda was not a safe country to which asylum seekers could be removed.
One of the new Government’s first actions has been to axe the scheme, with Mr Starmer declaring it “dead and buried” and Ms Cooper saying it had been a “complete con”. According to reports, about £290 million had been spent on the policy before its demise, and only four migrants had apparently left Britain in relation to it.
Labour had been clear about its attitude to the Rwanda policy in its election manifesto, stating that “even if it got off the ground, this scheme can only address fewer than one per cent of the asylum seekers arriving. It cannot work.”
In relation to the asylum system and border control, the Labour Party has set out that it will take the following actions:
There is presently a lack of detail about many aspects of the Labour Government’s stance on immigration – particularly legal immigration.
However, with the party’s manifesto having pledged a structured and expert-led approach to immigration, there are hopes that this could lead to a better-informed and more balanced immigration system that more effectively serves the requirements of both UK employers and the public.
The subject of immigration to the UK is a highly emotive and contested one, and there is evidence that Government policy in this area remains a major priority for UK voters. The results of a YouGov survey released during the election campaign, for instance, ranked immigration and asylum as among the top issues influencing how Britons intended to vote, behind the cost of living.
Some of those voters will now doubtless hope for a lowering of overall immigration levels to the UK, research in April 2023 having indicated that more than half (52%) of people in Britain believed immigration numbers should be reduced.
Other people, however, will be company decision-makers wondering what effect future UK Government policy will have on their ability to recruit workers possessing the skills they require. Many individuals will also aspire to reunite with family members in the UK, and will be interested in knowing whether the new Government will make the country’s notoriously complicated visa system easier to navigate.
No UK Government, of course, can possibly be “all things to all people” when it comes to immigration. Where pledges have been made that would necessitate extensive collaboration across multiple government departments, it remains to be seen how feasible those plans will be.
Furthermore, for all the restrictions that have been placed on certain UK visa routes over recent years, the country still has skills needs that cannot be easily and quickly catered for by the UK-resident workforce alone. Consequently, even under the Conservative Government with its rhetoric towards migrants that sometimes appeared hostile, there continued to be many options for foreign nationals with the right skills to come to the UK.
This is not a situation that we expect to change overnight. After all, even in the event of there being a strong supply of British workers willing to train up and fill the roles that may have otherwise been occupied by migrant workers, it would still take years for many such workers to complete their training. This leaves, in the meantime, plentiful scope for migrants to take on vacancies that urgently need to be filled right now.
Still, we would not be surprised to see such moves from the Labour Government in the meantime as the strengthening of the independent MAC and the further refinement of the Immigration Salary List (ISL), which replaced the Shortage Occupation List earlier in 2024.
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