Immigration minister advises businesses to turn to ‘British workforce’

Immigration minister Robert Jenrick has announced that UK businesses should be “looking to the British workforce” rather than immigration when tackling staff shortages.

Jenrick told Sky News’ Kay Burley: “I would be looking to the British workforce in the first instance, seeing how I can get local people into my business and train them up. There are five million economically inactive people in this country and the government’s first duty is to help as many of them as possible.”

He added: “Overall, our ambition is to reduce net migration. That’s what the British public want. That was one of the driving forces in the votes to leave the EU back in 2016 and it’s simply not true to say we’ve adopted a closed-door approach since then.”

His comments come after Tony Danker, director general of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), told delegates at the annual CBI conference today (21 November) that immigration is “the only thing that’s increased the potential growth of our economy since March”.

Danker added that amid “vast” labour shortages, “we don’t have enough Brits to go round for the vacancies that exist, and there’s a skills mismatch in any case”.

He has called on the government to take a “practical” approach towards immigration, which involves the implementation of fixed-term visas and a skills policy that works to fill vacant roles from the UK in the medium term.

He also wants the shortage occupation list to be circulated to the secretary of state for education and businesses, not just the minister for immigration.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released on 15 November showed that between August and October 2022, vacancies were 429,000 (54%) above the January to March 2020 pre-coronavirus (COVID-19) level and 32,000 (2.7%) higher than a year ago.

Although vacancies in accommodation and food service activities decreased during this period by 19,000, there were still 158,000 unfilled roles reported in hospitality between July and September this year.

Hospitality businesses have called on the implementation of a visa scheme to mitigate staff shortages on numerous occasions, including launching a petition calling for a hospitality worker visa scheme this August and at the HospoDemo protest held last Monday.