Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of the effect of the qualification criteria for Tier 2 work visas on the ability of the NHS to recruit staff from non-EEA countries.

The Tier 2 (General) visa route is intended to fill gaps in the UK labour market and is designed to serve the national interest by ensuring that employers look first to the UK resident labour market before recruiting from overseas. The route is capped at 20,700 places a year and the criteria for entry to the route is set following advice from the independent Migration Advisory Committee. Places are allocated on a monthly basis, with the highest priority being given to jobs in national shortage, followed by PhD-level occupations, graduate level jobs and then by salary from highest to lowest, in line with those that provide the greatest economic benefit to the UK. No visas have been refused for those seeking to come to the UK to undertake a post which the Migration Advisory Committee has determined should be on the shortage occupation list.

We continue to monitor the operation of the Tier 2 visa route to ensure that it balances enabling the brightest and best migrants to work in the UK with our commitment to reducing net migration.