Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, in light of current labour shortages in various industries, how they are adjusting immigration policies to attract and retain skilled workers from abroad.

Net migration is too high and must be reduced. This means employers should look to the domestic labour market to nurture and develop the skills where they can.

This is why we are setting out a different approach – one that links migration policy and visa controls to skills and labour market policies – so immigration is not used as an alternative to training or tackling workforce problems here at home.

As a first step, we have commissioned the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to identify the reasons for the reliance on international recruitment in key sectors, including IT and engineering.

The MAC commission has been published on their website: www.gov.uk/government/publications/mac-commissioned-to-review-it-and-engineering-sectors