Manual Workers: Vacancies

(asked on 16th June 2021) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to ensure that unskilled labour vacancies are being filled since the UK left the EU.


Answered by
Kevin Foster Portrait
Kevin Foster
This question was answered on 25th June 2021

The Department for Work and Pensions should be the first port of call for employers seeking to fill vacancies, rather than the Home Office.

We do not view any job as “unskilled”, the difference is how long it takes to train for or gain the necessary qualifications for it. Where a job needs only a short period of training or time to acquire the qualifications necessary the focus should be on recruiting from the domestic labour market, especially given the economic impact of the global pandemic means many may be looking for new employment or to change careers.

Immigration policy cannot be seen as an alternative to improving training and career pathways or tackling issues such as unattractive pay and working conditions. Given this we will not be introducing a general migration route allowing employers to recruit at or near the minimum wage, with no work-based training requirements.

More broadly, the Government’s Plan for Jobs is helping people across the country retrain, build new skills and getting back into work as part of the UK’s recovery from COVID-19, with the Department for Work and Pensions, Department for Education and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy leading work on the overall UK labour market and skills.

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