Foreign Workers: Engineers

Lord Soley Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Soley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the ability of British manufacturers to recruit engineers from overseas who are suitably qualified.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, where no suitable resident worker is available companies may recruit non-EEA engineers to graduate-level roles using the tier 2 skilled work route. Where there is a shortage of applicants, engineering roles are prioritised under the tier 2 limit and employers are not required to advertise the positions before recruiting non-EEA nationals.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

Will the Minister agree to review the way tier 2 is working? It is seriously bad news for small—particularly high-tech—companies which want to recruit overseas but cannot build up a base of experience and have no knowledge of why they get refused. They then have to apply again and often lose the person they need. It is doing a lot of damage to us overseas. If the Minister will not agree to review it, will he at least be prepared to see some representatives of that industry who I could happily bring to see him to explain why they find it damaging to both productivity and British reputation overseas?

[Lord Bates]

The tier 2 limit is kept under review by the Migration Advisory Committee, which is an independent committee. It produced a report on tier 2, making a number of recommendations that we are still considering. The key point is that we want to build a more sustainable workforce where the skills needed by engineers—in technology and those areas—are in the resident labour market and do not require people to recruit employees from outside the EEA area.