Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many applications in which (a) towns, (b) cities and (c) regions for Tier 2 (General) restricted Certificate of Sponsorship have been rejected on the grounds that the job is in an establishment which provides a take-away service in each of the last five years.

The information is not readily available and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

For the future, the Government intends that Tier 2 should be restricted to roles where there are genuine skills shortages or which require highly-specialised experts. We asked the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to advise on how to achieve this, but with sufficient flexibility to include high value roles and key public service workers. The MAC has now submitted its advice and the Government is considering the report carefully.