Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will make it his policy to add the NHS and Social Care as an advisory group policy area under the UK’s future skills-based immigration system: engagement programme; and for what reasons that area is not currently listed.

The Government published the White Paper, ‘The UK’s future skills-based immigration system’ (Cm 9722) on 19 December 2018. The White Paper is the start of a new conversation and we have launched a year-long engagement programme to take the views of stakeholders across the UK to hear their priorities, concerns and ideas before policies and processes are finalised and the new system comes into force from January 2021. We are determined to ensure that the future system is efficient and able to respond to users’ needs.

We have already delivered around 30 events reaching well over 500 stakeholders, including representatives from the health and social care sector.

As part of this engagement, we have established a range of advisory groups to enable detailed discussions with private, public and voluntary sector employers and industry representatives. Membership details of these groups will be published on gov.uk shortly.