30 January 2020

The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) yesterday published its 272-page report and recommendations on the UK’s future immigration system.  We highlight some of the key proposals and comment on how they may affect UK businesses and their migrant workforce.

Despite the Government’s much-trailed plans to replace the current system with an ‘Australian-style’ Points-Based System (PBS), unsurprisingly the MAC has recommended retaining much of the existing system, in particular Tier 2 (for employer-sponsored workers), with certain modifications.

Tier 2 (General) – sponsored workers
The MAC recommends:

• keeping the Tier 2 (General) category for skilled workers with a job offer, requiring a combination of skills and a minimum salary threshold.
• retaining the general salary threshold (despite calls from businesses to abolish it entirely) but reducing it to £25,600, currently, £30,000 for ‘experienced workers’, and to £17,920, currently, £20,800 for ‘new entrants’. The definition of new entrants would also be expanded, to include those who are working towards recognised professional qualifications and those who are moving directly into postdoctoral positions.
• continuing not to permit part-time workers to meet the salary threshold on a pro-rata basis but introducing an exception for existing leave holders who wish to switch to part-time when they become parents.
• rejecting the inclusion of additional forms of compensation, such as pensions or equity, to meet the salary threshold.

We welcome the MAC’s recommendations to lower the salary threshold, despite hoping to have seen even stronger measures. For employers outside the London area, it is regrettable that the MAC has again recommended against providing for lower salary levels regionally. However, it has recommended a pilot for particularly remote areas. The MAC recommendations are also based on the understanding that the Government will abolish the Tier 2 (General) cap and the Resident Labour Market Test, in accordance with its previous recommendations in 2018.

Tier 1 (Exceptional Talent) – a new points-based approach?
The MAC identified that a genuine ‘PBS’ approach could however usefully be applied to a category for highly skilled workers without a job offer (as in Australia). It considers the current Tier 1 (Exceptional Talent) category to be too restrictive and recommends expanding it, with points being awarded for characteristics such as qualifications (involving a more rigorous assessment of quality not simply level), English language, age, priority sectors. The MAC proposes a cap on numbers and operating the route on an “Expression of Interest” basis, creating a pool of migrants – arguably the least successful features of the Australian system creating both substantial delays and lack of certainty, because an applicant’s success depends not only on objective criteria but the relative strength of others in the pool.

It now remains to be seen how the UK Government will respond and which of the MAC’s recommendations it will choose to follow. To keep up to date on the latest UK and US immigration law developments please contact your assigned lawyer or email enquiries@lauradevine.com.