Visas fall by a third after crackdown on immigrants bringing families

The fall in foreign visas stems from measures introduced by Rishi Sunak, who pledged to go further in his manifesto by imposing an annual cap on immigration, with the aim to reduce it in each of the next five years.

Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to reduce net migration, but has not put any figure on it. Next week’s King’s Speech is expected to set out measures to reduce British companies’ reliance on foreign labour, and boost training and recruitment of domestic UK workers.

Under the plans, bosses who break employment law – for example by failing to pay their staff the minimum wage – will be banned from hiring workers from abroad. Training will also be linked to immigration, so sectors applying for foreign worker visas must first train British workers to do the jobs.

Labour is expected to continue with the legal migration measures introduced by the Conservatives, although there is pressure for relaxation of visa controls from some within its ranks

‘Make this easier again’

Sir Patrick Vallance, the new science minister, said on Wednesday that there was an opportunity to make it easier for people to move to the UK to contribute to the science sector.

He cited specifically the cost of visas as something that “needs to be looked at”, but also suggested that rules around dependants should be re-examined.

“We know there’s an impact of the difficulty of some of those schemes and so that means that there is an opportunity there to try and make this easier again, for people who do come in to (make) contributions to scientific knowledge creation and indeed, to companies,” he said.

“So we have just got to be realistic as to how we do that, but we need to be as competitive as other countries in terms of attracting that power.”