Letter from Migration Advisory Committee to the Home Secretary (accessible)
Published 23 February 2024
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From:
Migration Advisory Committee
2nd Floor Peel Building NE
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF
23 February 2024
Rt Hon James Cleverly MP
Home Secretary
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF
Dear Home Secretary,
I am pleased to inform you that we have published the Migration Advisory Committee’s (MAC) rapid review of the Immigration Salary List (ISL), a copy of which has been provided to your office.
We have recommended 21 occupations be included on the ISL, which represents 8% of job roles eligible for the Skilled Worker (SW) route by employment. This means that the interim ISL is smaller than the current Shortage Occupation List (SOL) as, previously, approximately 30% of job roles eligible for the SW route were on the SOL. These 21 occupations consist of 18 recommendations for the UK-wide ISL and 3 recommendations for the Scotland-only ISL.
Due to both the time constraints and scope attached to this review of the ISL, we were unable to undertake stakeholder consultation as part of this rapid review. We utilised the available data and the stakeholder evidence we published in our major reviews of the SOL in 2020 and 2023, allowing us to make recommendations to the government that are as robust as possible in the time frame.
As part of a fuller review of the ISL which you suggested would be forthcoming, the MAC intend to carry out extensive stakeholder consultation, including a Call for Evidence, stakeholder roundtables, and a renewed assessment of labour market conditions against the new salary thresholds.
We recommend that the government ask the MAC to conduct analysis and provide recommendations on what the benefits of the ISL should be prior to a full ISL review and we have highlighted in our report issues that require consideration. This could be done via a 2-stage process whereby the MAC carry out the necessary analysis and make recommendations to the government on what the benefits of the ISL should be. This needs to be done in advance of a full ISL review (where we review which occupations to include on the ISL) to enable stakeholders to provide evidence with an understanding of the benefits. Following agreement from the government on the benefits, the MAC could then carry out a major review of the ISL. It is not feasible to carry out a major review of what occupations to include on the list in advance of agreement of the benefits of the ISL.
We look forward to receiving a timely response to our rapid review of the ISL and to receiving the commissions for a full review of the ISL, and a review of the graduate route as was announced by the government on 4 December 2023.
On behalf of the Migration Advisory Committee.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Brian Bell
Chair, Migration Advisory Committee