Immigration Skills Charge (Amendment) Regulations 2020

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 7th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on continuing this series of regulations, and I encourage them to go further when they next have a chance. Among the people coming in and paying this charge, there are groups of people who have very similar skills and for whom £1,000 really is not a sufficient incentive to the employer to start investing in UK employees for the future.

I would like to see the Government having the power to look at who is coming in and paying this charge and, when they see a group of people with similar skills, to increase the level of the charge for those skills to £2,000, £5,000, £10,000 or whatever is required to start the companies concerned investing seriously in educating our own people. Otherwise, it is just a tax. I would like to see this used as a serious instrument of policy to reduce the number of people coming in with skills that we could easily reproduce in our own population if we took the trouble.