Figures show that over half a million people have left the workforce since the pandemic. The figure is largely driven by the UK's aging population and the number of people over fifty who have retired early or left work for health reasons. Last year net migration rose by record levels to over half a million. Many of these migrants will now be filling the vacancies left by those who have become 'economically inactive".

Meanwhile the number of vacancies within the UK remains historically high and employers are continuing to struggle to fill the gaps.

With this as a background, Rishi Sunak is soon to publish a new immigration policy which will focus largely on deterring illegal immigration, particularly the issue of small boats crossing the Channel from France, which is becoming one of the defining issues of the Government's final year before the next general election.

But this revamping of the immigration system is also an opportunity for policy makers to introduce measures to alleviate the real pressures businesses are under and to welcome in new workers to reinvigorate the dwindling UK workforce. Such a policy shift would appear to make sense. After all, in January Chancellor Jeremy Hunt called for 300,000 over-50s to return to work while the care sector is short of 165,000 workers, health needs 130,000, half of all UK building firms are short-staffed and a third of British businesses say they need extra workers.

Mr Sunak is caught in a paradox. On the one hand he has vowed to tighten borders, deter illegal entry and, most significantly, to maintain an outdated pre-pandemic manifesto promise to reduce net migration. On the other hand, economies need workers and there is not a work-ready domestic workforce lining up to take the jobs on offer in the UK.

So what could he do?

In my opinion it is unlikely that the "points-based" system will be replaced because the strategy works and provides the flexibility to alter different aspects and criteria, allowing more or less workers in as and when the need arises. A good example of this is the adjustment made in February last year to add care workers to the shortage occupation list as a concession. This allowed more lower skilled workers into the UK to fill care roles. Given the remaining labour pressures in that sector, there may be more changes on the way, one of which could be an amendment to the English language requirement for specific industries and roles. Take the offshore energy industry for example, which is experiencing a shortage of workers. If the marine company wants to sponsor crew for an offshore project (operating within the UK's 12-mile Nautical radius), work visas are required for non-UK/ROI crew. All the vessel crew who require sponsorship would need to be able to speak English at B1 level (reading, writing, speaking and listening) to get a skilled worker visa. B1 is intermediate level English. but for individuals for whom English is not a native language or who do not regularly speak in English/read English, this is very challenging to pass. In this kind of scenario, the sponsor is limited on options for whom they can sponsor (since most of their planned recruits work on overseas flagged vessels and do not speak English fluently) - the B1 English language requirement seems excessive in this context, since the sponsored vessel crew would be engaged on a short UK engagement, would rarely even be onshore, and have no plans to settle in the UK.

Industries like construction would probably face similar challenges, where the typical overseas skilled worker may not have the requisite level of English for sponsorship, making the skilled worker route effectively a moot option.

In any event he need not fear a public backlash if the results of a recent YouGov poll are anything to go buy. While the survey showed a majority of Britons oppose "more immigration" it also showed that they welcome it for specific jobs.

This should allow him to tinker with policy and keep all sides happy. for now.

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