Migration Advisory Committee minutes, 18 June 2021
Updated 5 July 2022
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140th meeting of the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC)
Friday 18th June 2021 10am to 12:30pm
Video / Telephone Conference
Attending:
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Professor Brian Bell
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Professor Dina Kiwan
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Professor Jo Swaffield
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Madeleine Sumption
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Professor Sergi Pardos-Prado
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Della McVay
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MAC Secretariat
Agenda item 1 – Welcome and introductions
1. Brian opened the meeting and welcomed new members of the MAC secretariat.
Agenda item 2 – Home Office (HO), MAC secretariat and MAC updates
2. Della McVay provided an update on HO business. Policy is being reviewed as the next phase of the COVID-19 roadmap has been pushed back to July. HO published a strategy on digitising the border. The team were involved in handling correspondence and media queries on labour shortages from various industries.
3. Toby Nutley provided an update on secretariat business. Inductions for new committee members have largely been done. Toby updated the committee on the progress of recruiting new secretariat members. The secretariat had a meeting with Della McVay to discuss future updates of the Shortage Occupation List. The Call for Evidence (CfE) has been extended for another week. Toby spoke of a data breach where a very small number of published responses to past CfE’s had not had contact details redacted, this was deemed to be low level by the HO and all responses had now been removed from the website and affected cases contacted, it was also to be discussed further in the agenda.
4. Brian informed everyone that the HO has sent HMRC a sample of visa applications to match with HMRC data, the matched sample holding aggregated data is likely to take a few weeks to be returned. Brian attended a meeting with Home Office Scientific Advisory Council (HOSAC) a panel of advisors that reports to the chief scientific advisor on a broad spectrum of science related issues.
Agenda item 3 – Intra-Company Transfer (ICT) stakeholder engagement update
5. The secretariat informed the committee that engagement with stakeholders had finished, they are in the process of arranging teleconference meetings with embassies but have been experiencing delays. Likely to secure meeting dates with embassies soon and will circulate invitations to committee members.
Agenda item 4 – ICT CfE
6. The secretariat asked the committee for any comments and questions on the initial findings of the CfE responses.
Agenda item 5 – ICT research update
7. The secretariat updated the committee on the progress of the research interviews of ICT users. The research agency will be contacting individuals to arrange interviews today, the committee were asked if they had any questions or anything, they would like to add to the topic guide for the interviews.
Agenda item 6 – ICT policy questions refresh
8. The secretariat asked for comments on the ICT policy questions document which has been updated.
Agenda item 7 – ICT impacts – draft chapter
9. The committee were asked for feedback and comments on the first draft of the ICT impacts chapter and if there were areas the committee would like to explore further.
Agenda item 8 – Equality analysis for MAC reports
10. The secretariat discussed options for how the MAC might want to explore subgroup differences for the ICT report to ensure that no groups are disadvantaged when deciding on recommendations. The committee were asked for their views on whether they agreed with the approach, whether other things should be covered, and how to go about reporting on the findings for the ICT report.
Agenda item 9 – MAC risk register
11. The secretariat outlined the risks on the overall MAC risk register, these will be discussed quarterly at committee meetings. The secretariat welcomed any comments on risks and issues and the approach to risks.
Agenda item 10 – Social care research questions
12. The questions in the paper were discussed by the secretariat and the committee were asked for their comments.
Agenda item 11 – Bespoke immigration route for social care
13. The secretariat outlined other areas in the paper and welcomed feedback from the committee.
Agenda item 12 – AOB
14. Toby Nutley discussed the issue of data breach with the committee and the steps the secretariat had taken to mitigate and plans for ensuring this doesn’t occur again.