Increase in minimum salary needed – skilled worker visas | Consensus HR – Herts, Beds
Responding to the recent figures showing increases in annual immigration, quite apart from those entering the UK in “small boats”, Home Secretary, James Cleverly, has told Parliament that the Government intends to increase the minimum salary needed to get a skilled worker visa.
It will go up, next spring, from £26,200 to £38,700.
Mr Cleverly said his aim was to stop immigration undercutting the salary of British workers. However, he went on, those coming on health and social care visa routes will be exempt “so we can continue to bring in the healthcare workers on which our care sector and NHS rely”.
“We will scrap cut-price shortage labour from overseas by ending the 20% going-rate salary discount for shortage occupations and reforming the shortage occupation list (SOL),” the Home Secretary told MPs.
He said that the Government intends to create a new immigration salary list with a reduced number of occupations in co-ordination with the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC). The MAC is being asked to review the occupations on the SOL because of the new higher-skilled worker salary thresholds.
Among other changes to the rules, Mr Cleverly said that the Government intends to ensure that people only bring dependants who they can support financially by raising the minimum income for family visas to the same threshold as the minimum salary threshold for skilled workers.
From January 2024, he continued, the right for international students to bring dependants will be removed unless they are on postgraduate courses designated as a research programme. In addition, care firms in England must be regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in order for them to sponsor visas.
Taken together, this package will mean that around 300,000 people who came to the UK last year would now not be able to do so.
Chief Executive Officer of Care England, Professor Martin Green, said: “If the Government now wants to move away from international recruitment as the solution to fixing the social care workforce crisis, it must act swiftly and invest in improving the pay and conditions to drive domestic recruitment.”
HR Inform – 7-Dec-23
Our HR Comment: Government to increase minimum salary needed to get skilled worker visas | Consensus HR – Herts, Beds
Matthew P Chilcott, FCIPD, ACEL, Owner of Consensus HR comments: – “This is a very interesting article, and we wait to see the outcome on the Jobs Market. At Consensus HR, we always ensure that our clients are paying what is expected within the workplace and to the law with the changing pay rates whilst looking at the company’s recruitment strategy to attract and retain the best talent for the business and employee’s success.”
YOUR OUTSOURCED HUMAN RESOURCES DEPARTMENT.
For further information on any of the HR subjects we provide, please click the heading below:
