Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government how they intend to fill the gap in the jobs market created by the anticipated reduction in legal working migrants as a result of the Government's proposed change to the income requirement thresholds for legal migration, and how much such actions or training schemes are expected to cost.

As the Prime Minister has made clear, current levels of migration to the UK are far too high. The long-term plan the Home Secretary has announced would mean around 300,000 of the people who came to the UK last year would not have been able to come.

Raising the salary criteria is designed to ensure that resident workers’ wages cannot be undercut and ensures that the skilled worker route is not used as a source of low-cost labour. This will encourage employers to invest in the resident population and move away from the reliance on migrant labour.

This is alongside our extensive efforts to get more British people working. The Government believes immigration must be considered alongside investment in, and development of, the UK’s domestic labour force, rather than as an alternative to it. Enquiries on how best to address recruitment issues and/or take of advantage of the skills system to grow the workforce should in the first instance be directed to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the Department for Education, as the departments dealing with employment and skills respectively.

DWP has a broad offer to support people back into and progress in work. Our £2.5bn Back to Work plan – announced as part of the Autumn Statement - will go further by helping thousands of people with disabilities, long-term health conditions and the long-term unemployed, to move into jobs.