Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing regional variations in the salary thresholds for tier two visas for skilled non-EU migrants.

The Government is committed to developing an immigration system that serves the national interest and are clear that applying different immigration rules to different parts of the UK would complicate the immigration system, harm its integrity, and cause difficulties for employers who need the flexibility to deploy their staff to other parts of the UK.

The Government commissioned the independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to undertake a comprehensive review of the Tier 2 route in June 2015.

The MAC concluded and has repeatedly recommended that we should not operate different salary thresholds for different regions and countries in the UK. More information about the MAC and its report on Tier 2 can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migration-advisory-committee-mac-review-tier-2-migration