White paper to set out tough UK immigration regime post-Brexit

Sajid Javid is expected to publish a long-delayed white paper on Britain’s tough new immigration regime on Wednesday, as the prime minister seeks to build the case for her Brexit deal by pledging to “take back control of our borders”.

Whitehall sources said final drafts of key passages of the document were still passing between departments on Tuesday night; but it would make clear the government is not prepared to offer EU migrants preferential access to Britain’s labour market.

Instead, the £30,000-a-year minimum salary threshold that is already imposed on non-EU workers will also apply to migrants from the EU27, although there may be further consultation about how the system will operate.

The chancellor, Philip Hammond, the business secretary, Greg Clark, and Javid, had expressed concern in private about the impact of the threshold. They were anxious that a sudden, dramatic reduction in the availability of EU migrants in key sectors would threaten the economy.

One cabinet minister said they believed the majority of their colleagues would favour a lower floor, of £21,000. But the prime minister, a longstanding advocate of reducing immigration, stood firm.

Downing Street believes one of the central messages from voters in the 2016 Brexit referendum was a demand that migration be controlled. Ending free movement is also a key point of difference between Theresa May’s Brexit stance, and alternatives such as the Norway-style deal advocated by some in cabinet.

The prime minister apologised last month after sparking controversy by telling business leaders that EU migrants would no longer be able to “jump the queue”, after Brexit.

Under the new system, which follows recommendations from the independent migration advisory committee (MAC), skilled migrants would have to earn at least £30,000 annually before being allowed in to the UK on five-year visas.

Downing Street hopes refusing to offer EU migrants preferential treatment will help to unlock future trade deals with non-EU countries such as India, which are likely to be keen to win a more liberal regime for their citizens.

Javid said: “We are delivering on the clear instruction to get control over our borders and will bring in a new system that works in the interest of the British people.

“It will be a single, skills-based immigration system built around the talent and expertise people can bring, rather than where they come from – maximising the benefits of immigration and demonstrating the UK is open for business.”

The home secretary has previously hinted he was minded to scrap the current cap on highly skilled migrants of 20,700 a year.

May has previously suggested that she hoped businesses would see the new system as an incentive to train British workers. “We are aware, we are talking to business about their needs, that’s one of the things the MAC did as well,” she told reporters at the G20 summit in Argentina last month.

“What I hope to see and what I’m sure we will see is opportunities for young people in the UK, opportunities for training and skilling people from the UK. But we recognise businesses do want to bring people in from the rest of the world, particularly in highly skilled areas and our immigration system will reflect that.”

The white paper is not expected to repeat the Conservatives’ longstanding manifesto pledge to reduce net migration below 100,000; but the impact of the new system is likely to be significantly lower migration.

However, the housing minister, James Brokenshire, repeated that pledge on Tuesday morning, saying: “We are committed to seeing net migration reduced to those sustainable numbers that we saw back before 1998 when it was less than 100,000.”

Labour’s shadow home secretary Diane Abbott has criticised the idea that workers earning less than £30,000 in sectors such as nursing and elderly care, are low-skilled, warning that the economy would “grind to a halt” without them.

The latest official figures showed that net migration from the EU to the UK has slumped to a six-year low, while non-EU migration is the highest in more than a decade.

Overall, net long-term international migration was 273,000. That was down from the record levels of about 330,000 two years ago, but still almost three times the government’s target.