Starmer talking about immigration policy

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pwa
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Starmer talking about immigration policy

Post by pwa »

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63707941

For me, he is starting to make the right noises. He is talking about a pragmatic policy on immigration, reducing the need for imported labour to fill jobs but, at the same time, recognising the need for some imported labour in certain sectors. The sort of policy that Labour used to strive for.

If he is saying what I think he is saying, he is coming round to my own view that, for example, we ought to be trying to get existing UK residents into nursing by giving them a career to look forward to, and by training them in the right numbers. But doing that will take time, so in the meantime we must fill the void with nurses from abroad, who will of course stay here permanently if they wish. Pragmatic but going in the right direction.

Any thoughts?
reohn2
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Re: Starmer talking about immigration policy

Post by reohn2 »

Agreed!
The UK has been deliberately poaching doctors and nursing staff from countries that need those staff,whilst making it harder for UK citizens to train,and coming from poor economies they're less likely to complain about working conditions or hours as they're glad to be here.
It's wrong and the government knows it's wrong.

I've no problem with immigrants filling the jobs UK citizens can't or won't do but there has to be decent pay and conditions to go along with it,that can only be acheived by laws to protect those workers and a good trade union movement alongside them.
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Nearholmer
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Re: Starmer talking about immigration policy

Post by Nearholmer »

But doing that will take time, so in the meantime we must fill the void with nurses from abroad,
It will take very considerable time, and the need for fully educated and trained people to fill skilled roles is by no means confined to nurses.

As I’ve banged on about in several other threads, the decay of proper education and training for highly skilled roles in this country since c1980, even further back if you look at some analyses, has been one of the great “self-defeating initiatives” that we’ve sleep-walked into as a country.

So, yes, almost irrespective of the immigration situation, the country needs to get ahead and deal with this, ideally by a collaborative effort between government and industry, and ideally starting yesterday. It’s a big job, “turning a super-tanker” stuff.

My own involvement with it for c20 years until I ceased full-time work was in overseeing a graduate training scheme for electrical power engineers (probably taking c5% of my work time) and the biggest challenge we had was finding the small number of really good candidates that we needed, because the number of UK students studying the subject is so small. There are relatively few university courses in the topic, and the universities are incentivised to focus very largely on educating overseas students (surprising number from China), so we actually export large numbers of well educated engineers, while not having enough at home. In short, the whole arrangement is a bit of a mess.
axel_knutt
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Re: Starmer talking about immigration policy

Post by axel_knutt »

Migrants from poorer countries will always be willing to work for less than the locals, and so as long as the wealth difference exists we'll continue to import labour and export jobs. The days when we could enjoy our wealth in glorious isolation from the rest of the world are gone, because the economy is global, and our products won't be competitive using local labour. Economies like China and India are in the ascendance, and ours in decline, we'll meet somewhere in between, either by design, or by some sort of global economic & environmental collapse.
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simonineaston
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Re: Starmer talking about immigration policy

Post by simonineaston »

While I get what he's saying about fair wages, he's going to have to display considereable skill walking the tightrope above the murky pools of migration, legal & illegal, getting UK employers to pay decent wages for jobs we've come to depend on being paid a pittance eg social care, garment manufacture and food preparation. Let alone getting UK employees to start working in those sectors...
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Nearholmer
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Re: Starmer talking about immigration policy

Post by Nearholmer »

The days when we could enjoy our wealth in glorious isolation from the rest of the world are gone,
I don’t think we ever did, in that for the entire period that Britain had glorious (if unequally shared) wealth, it was heavily dependant upon the labour of generally poorly paid people, and some who weren’t paid at all, in faraway places …… so isolated physically, but inextricably linked economically.
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al_yrpal
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Re: Starmer talking about immigration policy

Post by al_yrpal »

What with this and getting rid of the House of Lords in its present form Starmer is starting to say the right things.

The US governs on 100 Senators, 435 representatives in the house, a President and vice President. We have 635 MPs and 785 Lords. Their population 350 million odd, ours 70 million.

Ridiculous! Needs addressing urgently.

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Tangled Metal
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Re: Starmer talking about immigration policy

Post by Tangled Metal »

al_yrpal wrote: 22 Nov 2022, 3:25pm What with this and getting rid of the House of Lords in its present form Starmer is starting to say the right things.

The US governs on 100 Senators, 435 representatives in the house, a President and vice President. We have 635 MPs and 785 Lords. Their population 350 million odd, ours 70 million.

Ridiculous! Needs addressing urgently.

Al
USA also had a federal system where a lot of power is within the state legislature. So you need to add all them to your total figure. I think that's 7383 people. Not sure if that includes governors too.

Nearly 7900 people elected to federal and state legislatures, Senate's and house of representatives. Then you've got the equivalent to county and metropolitan councils in the the UK on top. Now how does that compare with the UK situation wrt representatives/ population size? Not any better than the UK after all?
hjd10
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Re: Starmer talking about immigration policy

Post by hjd10 »

pwa wrote: 22 Nov 2022, 6:55am https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63707941

For me, he is starting to make the right noises. He is talking about a pragmatic policy on immigration, reducing the need for imported labour to fill jobs but, at the same time, recognising the need for some imported labour in certain sectors. The sort of policy that Labour used to strive for.

If he is saying what I think he is saying, he is coming round to my own view that, for example, we ought to be trying to get existing UK residents into nursing by giving them a career to look forward to, and by training them in the right numbers. But doing that will take time, so in the meantime we must fill the void with nurses from abroad, who will of course stay here permanently if they wish. Pragmatic but going in the right direction.

Any thoughts?
Good points, we shouldn't be poaching trained medical staff from other countries as their own countries need them as well!
One issue that seems to be missing from the whole discussion though, shouldn't we be trying to get those economically inactive people back into work 1st, rather than employing immigrants while still paying benefits to close to 3 million people who could be working?
Nearholmer
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Re: Starmer talking about immigration policy

Post by Nearholmer »

shouldn't we be trying to get those economically inactive people back into work
Do you know what “economically inactive” actually means?

In case not, here is the formal definition from the ONS:

The data measures the percentage of working age people (16 to 64 year olds) who were economically inactive.

A working age person is economically inactive if they are:

out of work
not actively looking for work
not waiting to start a job
not in full-time education
caring for their family
retired”


About 9 Million people (a fifth) 16-64yo fall under this description for one reason or another:

2.4M students
1.7M caring for family
0.2M temporarily sick
2.5M long term sick
0.02M discouraged workers (which I think means people who would like a job but have given up trying to find one)
1.2M retired
1.0M other (including the idle rich presumably!)

The overall number of people falling under the description hasn’t changed a great deal over the time since stats began to be gathered in 1992, which surprised me. Given the recent discussion of the topic, I assumed that the number must have increased dramatically; it hasn’t.

Out of interest, where does your figure that 3 million people who are in receipt of benefits and not working but could be working come from? There are presently c1.2M unemployed (that number is not within “economically inactive”), so where does the other 1.8M come from?

To me the “big issue” in the numbers is the proportion of people who are long term sick, which has gone up significantly since the start of the pandemic, hinting at a link to the state of the NHS.
pwa
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Re: Starmer talking about immigration policy

Post by pwa »

hjd10 wrote: 22 Nov 2022, 10:52pm
pwa wrote: 22 Nov 2022, 6:55am https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63707941

For me, he is starting to make the right noises. He is talking about a pragmatic policy on immigration, reducing the need for imported labour to fill jobs but, at the same time, recognising the need for some imported labour in certain sectors. The sort of policy that Labour used to strive for.

If he is saying what I think he is saying, he is coming round to my own view that, for example, we ought to be trying to get existing UK residents into nursing by giving them a career to look forward to, and by training them in the right numbers. But doing that will take time, so in the meantime we must fill the void with nurses from abroad, who will of course stay here permanently if they wish. Pragmatic but going in the right direction.

Any thoughts?
Good points, we shouldn't be poaching trained medical staff from other countries as their own countries need them as well!
One issue that seems to be missing from the whole discussion though, shouldn't we be trying to get those economically inactive people back into work 1st, rather than employing immigrants while still paying benefits to close to 3 million people who could be working?
One way of doing that might be to give people over retirement age a tax exemption for doing a few hours of low paid work each week. Working at a bar for example, filling a position that otherwise stays unfilled. Or even a sliding scale for how much income tax you pay, in any job, with it dropping off the older you get after a certain age. Maybe that would incentivise staying on a few years longer.
deeferdonk
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Re: Starmer talking about immigration policy

Post by deeferdonk »

Weird how market forces only appear to affect wages in one direction.

Plentiful "cheap labour" from abroad drives down wages apparently.

However there's a labour shortage, yet whole industries are having to strike to get something near to inflation matching wage raises.

Makes you think the issue may not be the "cheap labour" after all.
reohn2
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Re: Starmer talking about immigration policy

Post by reohn2 »

pwa wrote: 23 Nov 2022, 6:40am One way of doing that might be to give people over retirement age a tax exemption for doing a few hours of low paid work each week. Working at a bar for example, filling a position that otherwise stays unfilled. Or even a sliding scale for how much income tax you pay, in any job, with it dropping off the older you get after a certain age. Maybe that would incentivise staying on a few years longer.
I can think OTTOMH a few ways a system like that could be abused by wealth pensioners to their advantage.
Eg; someone paying say £3k a year income tax might approach an employer whose a friend or family member offer them £1k as a ghost employer and rake in £2k extra income.There'll be other ways no doubt.

At 70 I'm elegible to pay income tax on my income I've problem with that,it's how some of it's wasted that bothers me.
Last edited by reohn2 on 23 Nov 2022, 7:57am, edited 1 time in total.
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pwa
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Re: Starmer talking about immigration policy

Post by pwa »

reohn2 wrote: 23 Nov 2022, 7:51am
pwa wrote: 23 Nov 2022, 6:40am One way of doing that might be to give people over retirement age a tax exemption for doing a few hours of low paid work each week. Working at a bar for example, filling a position that otherwise stays unfilled. Or even a sliding scale for how much income tax you pay, in any job, with it dropping off the older you get after a certain age. Maybe that would incentivise staying on a few years longer.
I can think OTTOMH a few ways a system like that could be abused by wealth pensioners to their advantage.
Yes, I know. It would have to be worded quite carefully. A small numer of hours per week, an hourly rate that is quite low. But it could be extended to certain higher paid jobs with a labour shortage, such as consultants and GPs. Worth considering, at least.
reohn2
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Re: Starmer talking about immigration policy

Post by reohn2 »

Typing at the same time,see my edit.
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