On Sunday, Keir Starmer announced that the Labour government would be tackling what he deemed to be an "over-reliance" on immigration in the British economy. The recently-elected prime minister said the goal was to slash demand for overseas workers in favour of home-grown talent via a program that would ensure young Brits have the ability to learn the skills needed to get a job.
Starmer and his ministers said they hoped to achieve that goal via a new government body, Skills England, which will work with stakeholders to ensure British workers have first crack at plugging "skills gaps" in the market. The country has long relied on migrant labour to fill vacancies in certain sectors such as healthcare and hospitality.
"All to often young people in our country have been let down, not given access to the right opportunities or training in their community," Starmer lamented during a press conference, explaining that this has "created an over-reliance in our economy of migration."
"I do not criticise businesses who hire overseas workers, and I certainly don't diminish the contribution that migration makes to our economy, to our public services, and of course, to our communities," he added, noting that, "migration is part of our national story; it always has been, always will be."
Starmer explained that it "can't be right that some people don't get to feel the pride of making a contribution, the dignity of work, just because we can't find a way of creating a coherent skill system," and that the United Kingdom "won't be content to just pull the easy lever of importing skills."
"We're turning the page on that," he said, "but I want be clear as well, we are going to make sure that there are highly-motivated, ambitious young people who want to work in your business. That is our long-term ambition. We are going to fire up the training of more UK workers, and match peoples' aspirations, which I know are there, with more opportunity."
As the BBC reports, setting up the aforementioned governement body would take as long as a year, meaning it will be at least that long before any noticable changes are made. In 2023, net migration was down about 60,000 from the record 745,000 the year before, however it still remains higher than it was pre-Brexit.
