Braverman’s speech comes amid a growing row within the cabinet and the Conservative party over net migration, as Britain braces for a record increase in net migration figures this month. Reports have claimed that the figure could reach close to 1 million, from a record-breaking level of 504,000 last year
Thousands of Britons should be trained to drive trucks, work in the meat industry and gather crops rather than filling vacancies with foreign workers, British Home Secretary Braverman was proposing to tell Conservative activists on May 15, reported The Guardian.
In an intervention that will be seen as a rebuff to cabinet colleagues calling for an easing of visa rules to boost economic growth, the home secretary will say there is no good reason to bring in overseas workers to compensate for shortages in the haulage, butchering or farming industries.
Her speech comes amid a growing row within the cabinet and the Conservative party over net migration, as Britain braces for a record increase in net migration figures this month. Reports have claimed that the figure could reach close to 1 million, from a record-breaking level of 504,000 last year.
While Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Braverman have reiterated calls for net migration to be reduced in the long term to the tens of thousands, ministers including the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, and the Education Secretary, Gillian Keegan, have been keen to stress the economic benefits of issuing visas for workers in key sectors and students.
Braverman will tell the National Conservatism conference on Monday that she campaigned for Brexit so that the government could control migration.
“We need to get overall immigration numbers down. And we mustn’t forget how to do things for ourselves,” she will say.
“There is no good reason why we can’t train up enough HGV drivers, butchers or fruit pickers. Brexit enables us to build a high-skilled, high-wage economy that is less dependent on low-skilled foreign labour.”
The National Conservatism Conference, a three-day event in Westminster that began on May 15, has been organised by a US-based thinktank to bring together right-leaning public figures, journalists and scholars.
The Office of National Statistics (ONS) figures are to be published on May 25 and are expected to pile pressure on Sunak over the government’s 2019 pledge to bring down net immigration to “tens of thousands”, which he reiterated last year
It is the eighth conference launched by the Edmund Burke Foundation. Speakers will also include Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg and David Frost.
Foreign butchers are eligible to come to the UK as a skilled trade, under current rules. Poultry workers were eligible as seasonal workers in the run-up to Christmas, and fruit pickers are eligible for seasonal worker visas.
HGV drivers were eligible for special visas during the petrol crisis, but have been dropped from the list.
The Home Office is being lobbied to ease restrictions on foreign workers by the HGV, butchering and farming industries, departmental sources said.
A leading migration expert questioned whether Braverman’s suggestions would affect overall migration.
Madeleine Sumption, the head of the Oxford Migration Observatory, said: “The elephant in the room is the health and care sector, which made up more than half of long-term skilled worker visas last year.
The government has quite a lot of control over this sector, since it funds training places and sets, or otherwise directly influences, pay.
“If the government wants to reduce overseas recruitment, it has policy levers it could pull – at a cost, of course – such as addressing the funding crisis in social care,” she said.
Reports have suggested that official data will show annual net migration to the UK of between 650,000 and 997,000.
The Office of National Statistics (ONS) figures are to be published on May 25 and are expected to pile pressure on Sunak over the government’s 2019 pledge to bring down net immigration to “tens of thousands”, which he reiterated last year.
Whitehall sources said the figure would be less than 1 million but would still be a significant increase.
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