Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 21st May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I have great admiration for the right hon. Gentleman’s work on immigration and welfare, but I do not think that closing off the European labour market would be appropriate in a recession, because it would presumably apply both ways, meaning that British workers looking for jobs in the rest of the EU would also be badly affected. He is quite right to suggest, however, that the problems of the British economy need to be solved at the same time as the severe problems in the eurozone.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

My impression is that the fact that companies have never reached the cap in the number of available work permits suggests that it is not the Government-imposed cap that has affected this. One consequence that I see is that companies are exporting the work that would have been done in the UK to other countries, or using intra-company transfers. What is the Minister doing to ensure that we keep work in Britain?

[Damian Green]

First, we are putting limits on intra-company transfers—limits that were never there under the previous Government. We have set a minimum salary threshold of £40,000 for those who stay for longer than one year and a minimum salary of £24,000 for those who stay for less than one year. The hon. Lady identifies a potential problem, in that people could use intra-company transfers to try to drive out British workers, but that is precisely why we have taken these effective measures—to stop that kind of abuse of the system.