Visa red tape ‘is damaging London’s economic recovery’
THE visa system for foreign workers threatens to put a brake on the economic recovery in London.
Stringent rules and the cap on numbers is stopping firms from bringing in the skilled workers they need, the London Chamber of Commerce & Industry said today.
According to the LCCI’s research, migrant workers make a key contribution to London’s economic success, filling the skills gap in the domestic labour market.
It also found that overseas workers are particularly important to London’s burgeoning tech sector due to a short supply of UK applicants with the required skills or experience.
The chamber today said the Government needs to simplify the rules for work visas or risk threatening the growth of the capital’s economy.
Its research shows that for the last three quarters, more than half of London’s businesses looking to recruit workers struggled to find the skilled staff they needed from the UK.
It also found that recruitment of workers from outside the European Economic Area is particularly difficult due to frequent changes in immigration law, the strict nature of the rules and the cost and duration of the process.
Colin Stanbridge, chief executive of the LCCI, said: “Businesses are being tied up in red tape trying to navigate the complex immigration system. It is also hugely costly to bring in staff with the right skills. Smaller firms in particular are unfairly penalised.
“Government must make it easier for businesses to recruit skilled staff from overseas. London firms aren’t trying to flood the market with overseas talent, they are simply to fill skilled jobs with skilled candidates.”
NEW research for the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry highlights some of the problems created by the visa system for recruiting workers from outside the European Economic Area. London businesses told the LCCI that the visa regime is restrictive to the point where it is actually putting a brake on economic recovery. The regime is time-consuming and expensive, which is particularly burdensome for smaller businesses, and especially for tech companies.
The organisation is right to point out that firms should, and mostly do, only recruit staff from outside the UK when it is not possible to find workers here with the appropriate skills; EU workers meanwhile do not require visas. Plainly the longterm solution is to increase the employability of the home workforce by equipping them with the qualifications firms need. But businesses cannot wait: the visa regime needs to be simplified and speeded up to make it easier to recruit workers to fill the gap. London’s success depends on them.