Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Home Office

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts
Monday 21st January 2019

(5 years, 3 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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David Duguid Portrait David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)
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4. What plans he has for the UK’s future immigration system.

Jeremy Lefroy Portrait Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
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6. What plans he has for the UK’s future immigration system.

Gillian Keegan Portrait Gillian Keegan (Chichester) (Con)
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11. What plans he has for the UK’s future immigration system.

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Sajid Javid Portrait Sajid Javid
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My hon. Friend is right to highlight the opportunities that Brexit will bring for certain industries. I can assure him that the immigration White Paper does contain proposals to bring medium-skilled workers into the scope of skilled workers and also to introduce a temporary workers’ route at all skill levels. I hope that that offers him some reassurance.

Jeremy Lefroy Portrait Jeremy Lefroy
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Will my right hon. Friend assure me that the skills-based immigration system will not fall foul of an arbitrary salary cap? This is important in many sectors. In research—I declare an interest as I am on the board of a university—very highly skilled researchers are often not paid anything like £30,000 at the beginning of their career, but we need them for our university and research sector.

Sajid Javid Portrait Sajid Javid
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My hon. Friend is right to raise that issue. He may know that we made our visa offer for academics even more generous last year. Those changes have been warmly welcomed by the research community. I can assure him that we will engage with employers in the higher education sector and others before we determine any future salary thresholds.