Evidence mounts against aim to slash immigration by 2015

Does the government still intend to reduce net immigration to the ‘tens of thousands’ by 2015? A snapshot from parliamentary debate this week seems to show ministerial reluctance to repeat its commitment to this target.

In a House of Commons debate this week, home secretary Theresa May was put on the spot by a Birmingham Labour MP, Shabana Mahmood, regarding the government’s immigration targets. Mahmood asked May :

‘What is the exact reduction that the Secretary of State will achieve in the net migration figures this year and in each year up to 2015 to fulfil the firm pledge, which she appears to have again relegated to the status of an aim, to cut net migration to the tens of thousands by 2015?.’

May responded:

“As one of my hon. Friends just said, "Nice try." Of course, I am unable to give the hon. Lady an exact figure for net migration this year. There will be people across the world who have not decided whether they want to apply to come to the UK, and people in the UK who have not yet decided whether they want to leave. Nobody knows exactly what that figure will be”.

Answering Mahmood’s question would, of course, be impossible without a crystal ball, and the response from Theresa May that migration flows are inherently unpredictable was sensible. How on earth could the government set a fixed prediction for immigration from year to year, given the wide range of factors which affect it? But unfortunately, by setting as its objective the reduction of net immigration by 2015 to the tens of thousands, the government has already sent the public the message that it holds exactly these unworldly powers of prediction and control. And less than a year into the parliamentary term, the signs are that ministerial bluster about meeting this goal is turning to uncertainty.

Britain’s points based system report

The introduction of a fixed cap on economic immigration in order to reduce immigration has also been put under the spotlight in a new report from liberal thinktank Centre Forum. ‘Britain’s points based migration system’ uses existing evidence to review the short life so far of the points based system (PBS) for work and study in the UK – and makes some interesting recommendations to the government about how to effectively take it forward in the future. The value of fixed targets for economic immigration emerges as an area where more research is clearly needed.

Authored by Alisdair Murray (ex-director of Centre Forum), the report offers up a picture of an economic migration system based on a relatively solid design, but subject to ‘constant tinkering’ by successive governments during its short life so far. There is broad support for the use of points systems in general - in particular, a comparison with points systems in Canada and Australia highlights the value of flexible systems which facilitate economic immigration flows according to wider needs. However, the evidence from these countries indicates that points systems offer only limited control over immigration outcomes – of course governments can tweak the criteria for entry, but how far does this determine the outcomes of this migration ten years hence?

The report is broadly supportive of the PBS thus far. It finds that the PBS has delivered on its objectives in many ways, including simplifying a tangled web of immigration routes to the UK, and in using the scrutiny of independent economists via the Migration Advisory Committee in order to set the parameters of the PBS. Of course there are also plenty of areas where improvements are needed, and here the report indicates that we may be seeing movement in the wrong direction by the government. It closely questions the high level of political involvement in changes to the PBS – increasingly centred around the goal of reducing immigration to the UK. Ongoing shortcomings of the system include the lack of adequate data available to the Migration Advisory Committee in order to make its recommendations; displays of “bureaucratic inflexibility” among UKBA staff operating the system – resulting in unfair decision-making; and the limited definitions of skills used in the PBS which particularly disadvantages potential public sector workers. It makes a worrying observation about the gender balance of PBS applicants - two thirds of Tier 1 applicants are male, as are a staggering 78% of Tier 2 applicants.

Recommendations to the government regarding future reforms of the PBS are made here. In particular the report advises that measures be taken to redress the gender balance in the PBS, that a measure of soft skills be included (particularly in Tier 2), and that Tier 3 be properly considered as a means of bringing necessary labour to the UK from outside the European Union.

To some extent, this report also criticises the notion of introducing a 'cap' on entry under the PBS - but the alternative it puts forward will not satisfy many critics of the government's immigration cap. Centre Forum advises the government to set a ‘target range’ for skilled workers (e.g. between 20 – 24,000 per year) – a proposal which is not in itself a particularly different prospect from the fixed limit championed by the government, other than reducing the problems associated with having an arbitrary cut-off point for applications. But the notion of a target range does not, however, present a challenge to the policy connection between limiting economic immigration and an overall goal of reducing net immigration.

Again turning to the examples of Canada and Australia, both countries do set broad targets for immigration, but they operate in a very different way to that put forward by the UK government. Neither country operates a 'hard cap’ (or fixed limit) on immigration: Canada operates a soft target for immigration, whilst Australia has a processing target, meaning that surplus applications can be rolled over into the following year. The critical difference with both is that points systems in these countries are directly aimed at facilitating population growth, as opposed to restricting economic immigration, and overall net migration rates in these countries are substantially higher than in the UK. There is little evidence to be drawn from these examples about either the use of fixed caps or of target ranges in order to reduce immigration – and we should be sceptical about the introduction of either in the context of the UK too.

Overall, plenty of food for thought here around government moves to insert political objectives into economic migration policy – and ultimately about whether a reduction in migrant numbers should really be the benchmark for policy success.