Visas: Skilled Workers
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of reviewing the minimum salary threshold for the Skilled Worker visa to provide exemptions for (a) the manufacturing sector and (b) other sectors with a shortage of workers.
Answered by Seema Malhotra
The salary thresholds are in place to ensure that resident workers’ wages should not be undercut and to protect overseas workers from being used as low-cost labour. The thresholds are set at the median levels according to the Office for National Statistics Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings.
The Government’s objective is to bring net migration down, linking migration with wider labour market policies, so that immigration is not used as an alternative to training or tackling workforce problems in the UK.
These objectives are also why this Government has maintained the current salary the Skilled Worker route.
As the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has said, salaries generally need to rise in response to shortages, which challenges the suggestion that shortages could be eased by paying lower wages. The MAC has also consistently advised against regional salary thresholds, on the basis that this could exacerbate existing regional pay differences.
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