Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill (First sitting)

Angela Richardson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 9th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

We have very limited time, and three Members are indicating that they wish to ask questions, so please make the questions and answers brief.

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

Q Mr Thomas, in your first answer you mentioned that 95% of the workers in production and manufacturing are from the EU. What proportion of that percentage are UK workers?

Tim Thomas: With great apologies, I could not catch much of the question. Could you repeat it? Is it possible to come closer to the microphone?

[Angela Richardson]

In your first answer you said that 95% of workers in production are EU nationals. What percentage of that are UK workers?

Tim Thomas: Apologies—what I said was that 95% of our members employ an EU worker. Across the whole of the sector, we employ between 2.7 million and 2.9 million workers, of whom about 330,000 are EU workers.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Q Given what you said, Mr Thomas, and everything that is going on, would it be helpful for the implementation of the new immigration system simply to be postponed?

Tim Thomas: I think that would simply lead to more uncertainty among manufacturers. We expect the UK Government to implement the new points-based system on the timeline that they guaranteed, and to provide businesses with the full suite of material—the statutory instruments and guidance—by the end of the summer at the latest so that we have a significant period to familiarise ourselves with it before January. If we delayed implementation, that would cause more uncertainty among businesses. Clearly, we need time to adjust and to see what the new system is. However, we naturally do not want a delay to the implementation date.