The UK government will unveil a landmark White Paper on Monday, 12 May, outlining sweeping reforms to overhaul what it describes as a failed immigration system.
The goal: to ensure immigration is controlled, managed, and fair.
Since 2020, net migration has surged to record highs—reaching nearly one million in 2023—largely due to increased overseas recruitment. The government says it inherited a broken system and is now acting decisively to bring migration down, boost domestic skills, and protect the UK economy.
Key Reforms in the Immigration White Paper:
- Raising Visa Standards: Work visa requirements will be tightened, returning the skills threshold to degree level (RQF6). This move reverses recent trends that saw a growing number of lower-skilled workers entering the UK.
- Reducing Reliance on Foreign Labour: Employers will face stricter rules for hiring foreign workers, especially in shortage occupations. Access will be time-limited and based on hard evidence of need, alongside commitments to invest in UK-based training.
- Boosting Domestic Skills: The government will tackle long-standing underinvestment in training by supporting employers to develop workforce strategies that prioritize British workers, aiming to improve productivity and living standards.
- New Labour Market Oversight: A Labour Market Evidence Group (LMEG) will be created to analyze where sectors depend too heavily on overseas labour and recommend reforms.
The approach marks a major shift: instead of using migration to plug workforce gaps, employers will now be expected to invest in domestic talent as the default solution.
Maintaining access to global talent
While aiming to reduce overall migration, the UK will remain open to highly skilled international talent that supports economic growth. The reforms aim to ensure that migration truly reflects skill and contribution.
Stronger enforcement and public confidence
Since July 2024, 24,000 people with no legal right to remain have been removed—the highest number in eight years. The White Paper builds on this progress with further measures across work, study, and family migration, based on the principles of control, contribution, and community cohesion.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said:
“Migration must be properly controlled and managed so the system is fair. Instead, we’ve seen net migration quadruple in the space of just four years, driven especially by overseas recruitment.
We inherited a failed immigration system where the previous government replaced free movement with a free market experiment.
Employers were given much greater freedom to recruit from abroad while action on training fell.
Overseas recruitment soared at the same time as big increases in the number of people not working or in education here in the UK.
The last government lost control of the immigration system and there was no proper plan to tackle skills shortages here at home.
This has undermined public confidence, distorted our labour market, and been really damaging for both our immigration system and our economy.
Under our Plan for Change, we are taking decisive action to restore control and order to the immigration system, raise domestic training and skills, and bring down net migration while promoting economic growth”. Photo by Simon Dawson / No10 Downing Street, Wikimedia commons.