UK visa system 'unresponsive to skills shortages'

The UK's largest business organisation is calling for immediate government action - including the introduction of a more responsive immigration system - to tackle the nation's growing skills shortage.

David Sapsted

6 September 2021

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) warned on Monday that labour shortages would continue "in the face of government inaction" and would hamper the UK's economic recovery.While the shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers - due both to Brexit and the pandemic - the organisation said the skills shortage extended to many other skilled professions.Tony Danker, the CBI’s director-general, said the three, immediate priorities were to marry skills policies to roles with the highest unfilled vacancies; to add greater flexibility to the Apprenticeship Levy programme; and to use the post-Brexit immigration system, which is supposedly focused on meeting skills shortages, to alleviate short-term pressures."Standing firm and waiting for shortages to solve themselves is not the way to run an economy. We need to simultaneously address short-term economic needs and long-term economic reform," Mr Danker said.He added that while other European countries were also experiencing post-pandemic staff shortages as their economies bounced back, the UK was particularly affected because so many overseas workers had left in the past 18 months at a time when the post-Brexit immigration system had made replacing them more complex.

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"The government’s ambition that the UK economy should become more high-skilled and productive is right. But implying that this can be achieved overnight is simply wrong. And a refusal to deploy temporary and targeted interventions to enable economic recovery is self-defeating," Mr Danker said."Let’s be clear – employers back existing government schemes to get people back into work. And businesses are already spending significant amounts on training, but that takes time to yield results, and some members suggest it could take two years rather than a couple of months for labour shortages to be fully eliminated.“Using existing levers at the UK’s control – like placing drivers, welders, butchers and bricklayers on the Shortage Occupation List – could make a real difference."The government promised an immigration system that would focus on the skills we need rather than unrestrained access to overseas labour. Yet here we have obvious and short-term skilled need but a system that can’t seem to respond.“Great economies like great businesses can walk and chew gum. We need short-term fixes to spur recovery and long-term reforms to change our economic model.”