Workshop: Why the Skilled Worker Visa Route Matters for UK Business

Yesterday, we had the pleasure of hosting an urgent and exclusive workshop event at the Alphabeta Building, Shoreditch, London.

The workshop brought Professor Brian Bell, Chair of the Migration Advisory Committee, into conversation with representatives from the UK’s startup ecosystem.

The discussion explored the significance of the skilled worker visa route, the most important route for employment immigration, introduced in the wave of Brexit.

The workshop brought together two perspectives: the priorities of those designing macro-level policy and those watching its trickle-down effects at a more granular level of information among a cohort who are globally mobile and very sensitive in their behaviour to small changes that make it harder for them to operate in a country.

The costs involved in the skilled worker route, from salary thresholds to administrative and renewal costs, are incentivising IT companies to hire remote workers overseas rather than sponsoring them to come to the UK.

However, Prof Bell argued that the huge upsurge in inward immigration to the UK suggested that, all things considered, visa policy design was not damping aggregate interest in coming to this country.

All parties agreed that visa routes other than Skilled Worker suffered from a lack of awareness—very few companies knew about the Scale-up visa.

The speakers coalesced around:

• A call on government ‘concierge’ service to provide support and guidance on the visa application process.
• The fact that government rhetoric may be a more important motivating factor for international talent than the specifics of visa policy.
• That national immigration policy is not currently calibrated to the reality of stark regional disparities - though it is unclear whether it could be.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic. Feel free to get in touch and stay tuned for our next steps.