A number one British businessman who sponsored the United Kingdom’s departure from the EU has known as at the executive to assist you permit international employees into the rustic to struggle labour shortages.
“In respect of immigration, it’s definitely not the Brexit that I wanted,” stated Lord Simon Wolfson, head of the Next retail chain.
Migration must be managed in one of these approach that it advantages reasonably than cripples the economic system, he instructed the BBC.
“We have were given other folks queuing as much as come to this nation to select plants which are rotting in fields, to paintings in warehouses that differently wouldn’t be operable, and we’re no longer allowing them to in. And we need to take a distinct way to economically-productive migration,” Lord Wolfson said.
Since new Brexit rules took effect at the start of 2021, EU nationals no longer have the freedom of movement to live and work in the UK. Instead, a new points-based immigration system has been implemented to attract skilled workers.
Latest official figures show that UK unemployment is at its lowest rate since 1974, while job vacancies remain at historically high levels.
“There are rather a lot and a variety of vacancies, too many vacancies, it is some of the issues that is inflicting such a lot inflation,” Lord Wolfson added.
As Euronews has highlighted, Brexit has contributed to chronic labour shortages in Britain across a range of sectors, including hospitality, farming and transport.
A study published in August by the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford said evidence suggested that UK immigration policy was one of the multiple factors contributing to labour shortages.
It noted that the number of visas issued to people from EU member states in 2021 for work and other reasons (43,000) had plummeted to a fraction of the 230,000-430,000 who came annually in the six years leading up to the coronavirus pandemic before new Brexit restrictions took effect.
The report recommended expanding visa eligibility for low-wage jobs to address gaps in the UK’s labour market.
In his interview, Lord Wolfson also called for the labour market to be opened up internationally, but for a tax to be imposed on firms employing foreign workers to encourage them to recruit from the domestic workforce as a priority.
“We’re all caught on this Brexit argument, and we need to remember the fact that what post-Brexit Britain looks as if isn’t the keep of the ones individuals who voted Brexit, it is for all folks to make a decision,” he said. “When you take a look at the vast majority of other folks in Britain, I feel they’ve an overly pragmatic to immigration. Yes keep watch over it the place it is destructive to society, however let other folks in who can give a contribution.”
The British government says it has delivered on its Brexit promise to “take again keep watch over” of UK borders, and international employees can nonetheless input by the use of the professional visa course or the seasonal agriculture scheme.
