Should the public sector face the same increasingly onerous immigration rules as the private sector?
Civil Service World recently highlighted Kafkaesque consequences of the last government’s measures to reduce legal immigration.
Net migration has plummeted since the post-pandemic, post-Brexit spike of 2023. Measures targeting international students, the care sector and employers in general in April 2024 accelerated this decline. And it’s not just private sector employers who are affected.
CSW’s Tevye Markson reported how the Department for Work and Pensions faces laying off around 500 staff because they pay lunch breaks – meaning their pay, when worked out per hour is no longer enough to qualify for sponsorship on a skilled worker visa. This situation illustrates just how absurdly high the minimum salary to sponsor immigrants has been hiked.
Last year the Conservative government raised the minimum salary threshold to sponsor someone on a skilled worker visa to £38,700 – far higher than the median civil service salary of £33,980. Those already sponsored as skilled workers under the pre-April 2024 rules can extend visas on a lower threshold of £29,000. Yet even for them a seemingly innocuous decision to pay lunch breaks could scupper the careers of hundreds of sponsored civil servants on annual salaries that would otherwise just scrape the minimum to qualify for the skilled worker visa.
The white paper is about to make sponsoring staff a whole lot harder
Of more concern, the government’s new immigration white paper – Restoring control over the immigration system – suggests salary thresholds should rise even higher. If the skilled worker salary threshold continues to be based on the median pay for all occupations that qualify when lower skilled roles are removed from the UK’s most common work visa as is planned, we could be looking at upwards of £50,000 as a new minimum salary.
Of course, the government could if it wanted choose a different formula this time. The White Paper intimates that the Migration Advisory Committee will be asked to undertake a thorough review of salary requirements, including discounts. While such a rise in salary threshold is a major concern for the civil service sector, so too is the rise in skills threshold the white paper proposes.
It’s worse than you think
Since the UK ended European free movement, employers have been able to sponsor roles at a skill level of RQF3 (school leaver) and above. According to plans set out in the white paper, only occupations deemed to be at skill level RQF6 and above (degree level and above in terms of skill, not necessarily educational attainment) will qualify for skilled worker visas.
Those already on the skilled worker route in these jobs will still be permitted to extend their visa, change employment and take supplementary employment, including in occupations below RQF6. However, new applicants from overseas or those applying to switch from other visas will have to follow the new rules.
I have counted 171 occupations which would no longer qualify as skilled enough – from publicans to plasterers, estate agents to interior designers, musicians to managers of healthcare practices, as well as public services associate professionals and national government administrative occupations.
There will be massive consequences for private sectors of the economy, but also for the civil service.
The vast majority of civil servants would no longer be deemed skilled enough. Administrative assistants/administrative officers, executive officers, higher executive officers, and even senior executive officers all fall under occupation codes that will no longer count. Once the measures outlined in the white paper are enacted (for which we only have the vague timescale so far of “within this parliament”) only staff on grade 7 and upwards would be deemed skilled enough to recruit on new skilled worker visas: around 17% of the UK’s civil servants.
Is there a way out of this mess?
For some occupations classed as RQF3-5, the white paper offers a temporary reprieve in the form of a new temporary shortage list to be used “on a time limited basis where the Migration Advisory Committee has advised it is justified, where there is a workforce strategy in place.” Skills and training strategies will be expected to eventually fill gaps in the labour market with resident workers.
Migrant workers sponsored on the temporary shortage list will have “restrictions on bringing dependants”. This will put many applicants off as evidenced by the fall in international students and care workers when dependent family were prohibited from joining them on their visas. According to the white paper, these visas would be temporary, so time spent on them may not count towards settlement. Again, this will put many candidates off.
Civil servants may not make it onto such a list anyway. The white paper warns that only “a narrow list of critical shortage occupations” will qualify for the list which replaces the current immigration salary list. Occupations will only be potentially added if they are deemed key to Britain’s industrial strategy or delivering critical infrastructure. The last shortage occupation list and the immigration salary list that replaced it in April 2024 contained no civil service professions.
Many of the changes trailed in the white paper will involve lengthy consultations. As I am advising other sectors, it’s going to be crucial in the months ahead to make a vocal and evidenced case for how civil service skillsets will be hit by these changes, how training could replace the need for hiring immigrants and whether realistically that is likely to fill skill gaps in the near future.
Unlike private sector employers, the public sector currently enjoys skilled worker visa salary thresholds based on national pay scales when it comes to sponsoring healthcare practitioners and teachers. Perhaps a solution would be to add civil servants to the new temporary shortage list and/or allow them to be sponsored on national pay scales too.
I’ll let CSW readers make their own minds about whether it would be fair if the government exempts itself from increasing inflationary burdens that they intend to saddle private sector employers with.
In the case of the civil service, it’s also worth noting that there are already limitations on the nationality of civil servants – other than British citizens, generally (with a few exceptions) only Commonwealth citizens and Europeans under the EU Settlement Scheme are allowed to work in the civil service. This restriction has nothing to with immigration or skills policy and is instead rooted in deep and historical ties. There are therefore wider domestic and foreign policy considerations that the government would be wise to consider when deciding whether and how to increase restrictions on sponsorship in the civil service.
Vanessa Ganguin is managing partner at Vanessa Ganguin Immigration Law