Downing Street has been forced to play down revelations from a junior minister that the government is considering asking employers to pay a £1,000-a-year tax on every skilled EU worker they bring into the UK post-Brexit, after the idea sparked fury from employers.
Robert Goodwill, immigration minister, raised the idea at a House of Lords committee on Wednesday, explaining the new policy would be an extension of the “immigration skills levy”, which is being imposed this April on workers from outside Europe.
The move is significant, since it suggests that the government would treat EU workers and non-EU workers as equals in the immigration system after the UK has left the bloc. However, Downing Street later said the policy was “not on the agenda” and that Mr Goodwill’s comments had been “misinterpreted and taken out of context”.
In his evidence to Peers, Mr Goodwill made clear the levy was part of an effort to encourage businesses to hire locally. “The Brexit negotiations give us the opportunity to control the numbers that come,” he said. “We are not saying we’re going to prevent people from coming here to work. We are just going to do that in a controlled way.”
Imagine what the UK headlines would be if the EU proposed this for UK nationals?
He said that under existing rules, to bring in an Indian computer programmer on a four-year contract, would cost £4,000 on top of the existing visa charge. “That’s something that currently applies to non-EU. That may be something that’s been suggested to us that could apply to EU,” Mr Goodwill said.
Following the hearing Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s representative in the Brexit process, had called the proposal “shocking”. “Imagine, just for a moment, what the UK headlines would be, if the EU proposed this for UK nationals?” he wrote on Twitter.
Josh Hardie, deputy-director general at the CBI, said while companies were keen to work with the government to devise a new system for controlling EU migration, extending the system that currently applies to workers from outside of the EU “would neither meet the needs of our economy nor be appropriate”.
Seamus Nevin, head of employment and skills policy at the Institute of Directors, also urged the government not to extend the levy. “Businesses are already working with ministers to improve the homegrown skills supply, but this tax will only damage jobs growth at a time when many businesses are living with uncertainty,” he said. “They simply cannot endure the double whammy of more restriction and then, if they do succeed in finding the right candidate, the prospect of an extra charge.”
When questioned about Mr Goodwill’s proposal, Theresa May’s spokeswoman said: “At no point did he say it was on the government’s agenda and it is not on the government’s agenda.”
But Downing Street did not rule out the idea of any levy on EU workers after Brexit. “We are clear there are a whole range of issues we will need to look at in the negotiation,” the spokeswoman said.
Ministers are under continued pressure to cut immigration after the most recent statistics showed net migration at a near-record level of 335,000 in the year to June 2016, more than three times the government’s “tens of thousands” target. The number of immigrants soared to 650,000, the highest figure yet, driven by the arrival of a record 284,000 EU citizens.
Despite these high numbers, farmers are still warning that they will be unable to find the low-skilled migrant workers they need after Brexit.
Mr Goodwill suggested during the Lords hearing that the government might introduce a seasonal scheme allowing agricultural workers such as fruit pickers to come to the UK for a short period without counting as permanent migrants. Until 2013, fruit and vegetable growers were permitted to employ Bulgarians and Romanians for up to six months at a time, with an annual quota set at 21,250.
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