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The UK government’s latest immigration plans signal a significant tightening of the migration system. With new thresholds and a shift in tone around workforce reliance, the white paper introduces a more selective approach. We summarise the whitepaper to help businesses and individuals understand what the changes could mean and why they’re happening now.

The UK’s immigration rules are set to tighten. Here’s what employers need to know.

<p>Last week, the UK government published its new immigration white paper ‘Restoring Control over the Immigration System’, which outlines an overhaul of the UK’s migration system. The policy, which was announced amid record numbers of net migration and political anxiety around the rise in support for Reform UK, is part of the government’s ‘<a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6751af4719e0c816d18d1df3/Plan_for_Change.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Plan for Change</a>’, which sets out a series of milestones it expects to achieve by the end of its five-year term in Parliament.</p>
<h2>The five key principles of the white paper</h2>
<p>The white paper is built around five key principles, which are as follows:</p>
<ol>
<li>Reducing net migration to manageable and controlled levels</li>
<li>Linking the system to skills and training requirements ‘so that no industry is allowed to rely solely on immigration to fill its skills shortages’</li>
<li>Creating a ‘fair and effective’ system</li>
<li>More effective enforcement of immigration rules</li>
<li>Supporting integration and community cohesion, with stricter English-language requirements for visas</li>
</ol>
<h2>Key changes in the white paper</h2>
<p>The government’s white paper proposes drastic changes to the current post-Brexit immigration system, including doubling the length of time required for settlement, increasing the financial and skills thresholds required in a revised points-based system, and creating stricter English-language requirements. It has been noted that the new system could make the UK citizenship<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/immigration-rules-uk-starmer-us-citizenship-australia-b2749224.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> harder to attain than in the US</a>, which has a reputation for having a notoriously tough immigration system.</p>
<p>These changes are underpinned by the key principles outlined in the white paper, and in particular seek to have the effect of reducing reliance on ‘low-skilled’ overseas labour.</p>
<p>We outline the key changes below.</p>
<h3>10-year timeline for settlement</h3>
<p>A headline reform in the white paper is the end of ‘automatic settlement’ after five years. As it stands, settlement or indefinite leave to remain (ILR) – the right to live permanently in the UK – has typically been granted after five years of living and working in the UK, subject to meeting further criteria. Dependants (spouses and children) could accompany the primary visa holder with relatively few additional requirements.</p>
<p>This time period will be doubled following the proposed reform, with settlement and citizenship requiring 10 years of residence, in combination with a revised points-based system.</p>
<h4>What this means for employers</h4>
<p>Businesses sponsoring employees may face higher attrition on increased administrative complexity as workers weigh up the prolonged route to settlement. Employers may also need to provide clearer development pathways to retain foreign talent over a longer qualifying period. To help retain employees from overseas, businesses could provide extra benefits to those who are highly skilled and valuable to the business.</p>
<h3>Skilled worker visa requirements</h3>
<p>The most commonly used route for employers seeking to recruit from overseas is the Skilled Worker visa, which allows UK companies to sponsor workers for roles that meet certain salary and skill thresholds. Currently, this includes roles at RQF level 3 (A-level equivalent) and above, with a minimum salary threshold of £38,700 a year, up from £26,200 in the previous year, with certain exceptions based on workers’ occupations or worker shortages.</p>
<p>The white paper states that the skills threshold or skilled worker visas will increase from RQF level 3 to RQF level 6 (i.e. from A-level to graduate level), removing lower-paid or ‘lower-skilled’ roles from eligibility. Salary thresholds will also rise and the Immigration Salary List (which previously offered discounts for shortage roles) will be abolished.</p>
<p>In the paper, it is noted that the skills threshold of RQF level 6 was in place before 2020, but reduced to RQF level 3 following Brexit, which led to ‘recent significant increases’ in immigration – and so the change is merely a reversal to a policy that was in place for a long time prior to this change. However, this ignores the crucial point that the reduction in skills thresholds was considered necessary to tackle an expert shortage in lower-paid workers following the UK’s exit from the European Union.</p>
<h4>What this means for employers</h4>
<p>This change is likely to have a significant impact on certain industries. Sectors that rely on mid-skilled labour, such as logistics, construction and hospitality, may find it no longer viable to sponsor visas, and recruiting from overseas will now require roles to be high-skill and high-pay.</p>
<p>Employers should be monitoring the situation to assess whether they are at risk of needing to implement new recruitment strategies or budgets.</p>
<h3>Overseas recruitment in social care</h3>
<p>Perhaps the most politically charged proposal is the closure of the social care visa route to new applicants from abroad. While transitional measures will allow extensions for workers already in the UK until 2028, the government appears to be signalling a shift away from overseas recruitment in social care.</p>
<h4>What this means for employers</h4>
<p>As part of this shift, it appears that the government expects employers to offer better pay, apprenticeships and structured training to attract UK-based workers – echoing similar policies in countries like Germany and Canada.</p>
<h3>Sectoral oversight and workforce planning</h3>
<p>A new Labour Market Evidence Group will assess which industries are overly reliant on foreign labour. Sectors found to be underinvesting in UK talent will be incentivised or compelled to change. Access to visas will depend on showing that domestic workforce strategies are in place.</p>
<h4>What this means for employers</h4>
<p>Sponsoring a visa will become conditional not just on skill level and salary, but also on demonstrating investment in UK labour. This might include apprenticeships, outreach to underemployed demographics or regional workforce partnerships.</p>
<h3>Stricter English-language requirements</h3>
<p>All adult dependents will now be required to meet stricter English-language requirements. This expands current requirements, with a focus on ‘integration’ into local communities. The white paper argues that this policy will benefit immigrant workers, citing ONS data that shows that ‘people with better English language skills were more likely to have worked at any time, be economically active or in full-time employment at present.’</p>
<h4>What this means for employers</h4>
<p>It’s likely this change will reduce the number of dependants accompanying workers and could make relocation less attractive for some applicants. It may also require additional HR support or legal advice when assessing applicants’ eligibility.</p>
<h2>Criticisms of the white paper</h2>
<p>Critics of the white paper have argued that the plans could have a detrimental rather than positive effect on integration and societal cohesion, with Sunder Katwala, director of the thinktank British Future, <a href="https://www.britishfuture.org/immigration-white-paper-measures-risk-damaging-integration/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">arguing</a> that ‘It’s hard to see how a 10-year wait before someone can become British helps them integrate.’ Addressing the issue of social workers from abroad, he went on to say: ‘The public is certainly not crying out for fewer migrant care home workers – seven in ten do not want reductions. Having cancelled the social care visa, the government needs to reassure people that it has a plan to ensure our creaking social care system has the workers it needs, and treats those already here fairly.’</p>
<p>The government’s new immigration policy is comprehensive, but without addressing significant gaps in policy across other areas, it remains up in the air whether the changes proposed in the white paper will be effective. We discuss some of these problems below.</p>
<h3>No mention of outsourcing</h3>
<p>Despite the government’s messaging and emphasis on ‘controls and a fair managed system’, the white paper ignores several key issues that go deeper than surface-level points about numbers or figures. Most importantly, there is no mention in the white paper of outsourcing, which poses a much greater threat to UK workers and the economy than immigration. Research from the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford has found that <a href="https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-labour-market-effects-of-immigration/?utm_source=chatgpt.com#kp2">the impact migration has on UK wages and employment prospects is small</a>, ‘making little or no impact on average employment or unemployment of existing workers’.</p>
<p>Contrast this with data on outsourcing, which suggests <a href="https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/27809/the-hidden-heist-how-outsourcing-is-stealing-uk-jobs-in-tech-and-financial-service">the UK loses over £100 billion annually to outsourcing in the tech sector</a> alone, that <a href="https://bponinja.com/2024/06/the-outsourcing-industry-in-the-uk-an-overview/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">48% of UK businesses outsource a business function</a>, and that the UK government could be losing tax revenue of up to £10,000 a year for every employee earning £40,000 annually. Critically, jobs outsourced abroad take spending power and money out of the UK economy, whereas immigration generally increases the amount of money in circulation within the UK economy.</p>
<h3>Domestic worker shortages</h3>
<p>The paper also does not engage seriously with the structural causes of worker shortages, such as quirks of the UK welfare system. It does address welfare briefly, stating that ‘there has been no serious plan either to increase the domestic labour supply or get inactive people back into work.’ But it goes on to say the ‘broken welfare’ system is the result of ‘a lack of action to support people to come off benefits and into the labour market.’</p>
<p>This is a shallow point that misses a far too often overlooked issue with the welfare system, which is that for many British workers, particularly those in social housing or on benefits, taking up a low-paid or seasonal job in another region risks losing entitlements or housing security. In contrast, a seasonal worker from overseas can take a UK fruit-picking job for six months, earn significantly more than at home, and return with an income often far surpassing what they might have earned domestically.</p>
<p>A problem further compounding this is that raising wages in traditionally low-paying sectors (such as agriculture), while potentially solving many of the problems highlighted in the white paper specifically to do with low wages in certain sectors, would be highly inflationary. High transport costs, an issue particularly acute in the UK with <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/united-kingdom/england/london/london-transport-prices-are-now-the-highest-in-the-world/">London’s travel costs now the highest in the world</a>, would also need to be addressed to tackle the above issue.</p>
<h3>International students and graduates</h3>
<p>The paper states that the post-study work period for graduates will be reduced from two years to 18 months – far shorter than in Australia, where students are allowed to remain from two to three years. This may mean graduates feel they have no choice but to accept the first sponsored role they are offered.</p>
<p>Related to this, there is no mention in the white paper of the financial dependence of UK universities on international students, despite widespread acknowledgement that tuition from overseas students is propping up many institutions. <a href="https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/130542/pdf/">Research from London Economics</a> estimates that international students bring net benefits of around £40 billion to the UK every year, and restricting student routes without addressing this could destabilise the sector.</p>
<h3>The broader context around the white paper</h3>
<p>The recent surge in immigration numbers – at 728,000 a year in 2024 and a record high of 906,000 in 2023 – is around double the pre-Brexit average, showing that leaving the EU has had the opposite effect on immigration that pro-Brexit campaigners envisioned. There are numerous complex reasons for this, although as the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford has noted, a large part of recent unusually high migration numbers is being ‘driven primarily by high demand for workers in the health and care sector and an increase in international student numbers’.</p>
<p>While the white paper’s proposed changes will likely have the effect of reducing the number of overseas workers and international students, without widespread reforms, UK may struggle to fill jobs at the bottom end of the labour market – regardless of how many visa routes are closed.</p>
<p>Further, while many aspects of the white paper bring the UK’s immigration policy closer in line to Canada and Australia, some aspects of the reform, including the length of time required for settlement, will make the UK ‘a relative outlier on the global stage, where 10 years to gain settlement is rare,’ <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/immigration-rules-uk-starmer-us-citizenship-australia-b2749224.html">according to Jonathan Beech</a>, managing partner at immigration law specialists Migrate UK. This is likely to make the UK a less attractive destination for points-based migrants and puts the UK at odds with many other developed countries. Only time will tell whether being an outlier pays off.</p>
<h2>Guidance for employers</h2>
<p>It’s early days yet for the government’s new immigration policy, and much of it may be changed or watered down. However, the white paper marks a significant weather change for the government, and for employers, these changes could have dramatic effects on the jobs market. Employers will likely also need to be aware of compliance when offering roles to graduate visa holders, as the rules around job codes and required skills levels are likely to get more complex.</p>
<p>These changes are likely to make it more expensive for employers to recruit for graduate-level positions and roles, and it will become very difficult for employers to recruit at below graduate level. Certain sectors are likely to be more affected than others – particularly social care and healthcare, construction and hospitality. Recruiting from overseas will require roles to be high-skill and high pay.</p>
<p>For tailored advice on employment law, <a href="https://linnearcms.wpenginepowered.com/get-in-touch/">contact a solicitor</a> at Linnear Legal today.</p>


The UK’s new immigration white paper outlines a tougher approach to visas and settlement. We explain what’s changing and how the policy could reshape the future of UK migration.

Labour’s new immigration policy: what it means for UK employers

The UK government’s new immigration policy overhauls visa rules, settlement and recruitment. We break down what it means for employers.

Labour’s new immigration policy: what it means for UK employers | Linnear Legal

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Labour’s new immigration policy: what it means for UK employers

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