Transparency data

Migration Advisory Committee minutes, 22 April 2022

Updated 6 July 2023

150th meeting of Migration Advisory Committee (MAC)

Friday 22nd April 2022, 10am to 12:30pm

Video/telephone conference

Attending

• Professor Brian Bell

• Professor Dina Kiwan

• Professor Jo Swaffield

• Madeleine Sumption

• Della McVay

• Toby Nutley

• MAC Secretariat

Apologies

• Professor Sergi Pardos-Prado

Agenda item 1 – Welcome and introductions

1. Brian Bell opened the meeting and welcomed the attendees.

Agenda item 2 – Home Office, MAC Secretariat and MAC updates, plus minutes from previous meeting

2. Della McVay provided an update on Home Office business, particularly on progress made on schemes supporting migrants from Ukraine and on the New Plan for Immigration. The department is busy with lots of routes being delivered. The Home Office is currently working on confirming future commissions for the MAC. Della also provided an update on the Nationalities and Borders Bill, which is currently with the House of Lords.

3. Toby Nutley provided an update on the MAC. The secretariat has expanded its Devolved Nations team. Ministers are currently very busy with other priorities, so a sixth committee member is yet to be appointed. Toby also provided an update on the most recent stakeholder forum as well as broad updates on the current work being undertaken by the secretariat.

4. Della McVay and Brian Bell suggested some minor amendments to the minutes for the 149th committee meeting.

Agenda Item 3 – Social care report launch plans

5. The secretariat provided an update on the launch of the social care report. This will be published on 27 April with a press conference to be held that afternoon provided that a printed copy has been laid in Parliament.

Agenda item 4 – Social care Revealing Reality (RR) report update and next steps

6. The Secretariat provided an update, noting that the latest draft of the Revealing Reality (RR) report has been received and will be sent to the committee and expert group in due course for comments. Any comments will then be fed back to RR.

7. The report is due to be published mid-May, with clarification that the views expressed are those of RR and not the MAC.

Agenda item 5 – Shortage occupation list (SOL) guidance/call for evidence (CfE)

8. The secretariat provided an update on work and posed some questions to the committee based on the call for evidence (CfE). These questions related to the inclusion of certain questions in the CfE and the new addition of explanatory notes for questions to encourage respondents to provide detailed responses.

9. The secretariat asked about providing a space for respondents to challenge the current listed skill level of occupations, and the committee discussed the methods of doing this and the merits and drawbacks of doing so.

Agenda item 6 – SOL indicators

10. The secretariat provided an update on the indicators. The new dashboard was presented, which the committee praised and made suggestions for minor improvements to improve accessibility for non-technical audiences. The committee also provided steer on standardising the coding language used for some of the indicators.

Agenda item 7 – Evaluation and the SOL

11. The Secretariat presented options for methodologies to be used in future evaluation work.

12. The committee agreed a plan for the Secretariat to scope pieces of work looking at the SOL, to feed into the evaluation and the next SOL commission. A focus on qualitative research pieces on current issues was agreed. Government policy may shape this depending on how it treats the SOL going forward.

13. Next steps were agreed, with a paper to be written for the next annual report examining the robustness of the time limited regression model on the SOL.

Agenda item 8 – Annual report scoping

14. The secretariat set out the broad outline for the annual report, with topics outlined. The committee broadly agreed to the list of topics presented and made suggestions for some additions, with the inclusion of further areas of focus which were committed to in last year’s report. The committee also made some suggestions on the way that the report should be approached and provided some themes for the core focus of the report.

Agenda item 9 – Quarterly evidence pack

15. The Secretariat presented the first quarterly evidence pack and discussed the charts involved. The committee provided thoughts and feedback with some suggestions for improvements and a steer for future iterations was agreed.

Agenda item 10 - Future committee meetings

16. Some options were proposed for incorporating face to face meetings into the schedule as part of a hybrid system. Committee members made some suggestions, and the hybrid approach as set out in the paper was agreed. The use of specific sub-groups where discussions involve specific areas of interest was also agreed.

Agenda item 11 – Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) labour shortages report

17. The committee discussed a reply to the EFRA committee’s request for a scheme of work. The committee agreed that as per the framework, government commissions take priority for the MAC’s work.