Lord Harrison
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Foreign Workers: Engineers
Lord Harrison Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Bates
The tier 2 limit is kept under review by the Migration Advisory Committee, which is an independent committee. It produced a report on tier 2, making a number of recommendations that we are still considering. The key point is that we want to build a more sustainable workforce where the skills needed by engineers—in technology and those areas—are in the resident labour market and do not require people to recruit employees from outside the EEA area.
Lord Harrison (Lab)
Would a modern Brunel and Pugin be excluded from the current employment applications?
Lord Bates
I do not know about that—obviously, the measure was not in place at that time or for their nationality. What I do know at this time is that we are investing heavily in science skills in this country. We have new science A-levels, new university technical colleges and a new science and technology baccalaureate, and the number of apprenticeships in science and manufacturing is up 74%. I think that that would be welcomed on all sides of the House and by Brunel and Pugin, if they were around.