I read the piece by Oliver Jacques earlier this week with some interest. As a second-generation migrant myself, you might not be surprised to find that my views on migration are relatively liberal. I tend to the view that migration can be a good thing, which in turn tends to put me amongst that group that right-wing campaigners describe mockingly as “open door liberals”.
But migration is like free markets, in that nobody really believes in an unfettered free market in the same way that nobody really believes in open borders – there have to be rules and limits. Indeed, even that small minority who claim to believe in unfettered free markets or open borders, when pushed, have caveats.
My family story is no different to many others, an exodus from the homeland in search of a better future. They were not persecuted in the sense of being threatened, and they played by the rules of the countries that they applied to. Points systems were navigated, choices made based on probabilities and opportunities.
For most non-imperial countries, that was a straightforward choice as to what migrants they wanted, and in what numbers. It is a bit more challenging for those countries who had empires, because of the flows of population from their colonies, but the principle is generally the same. Economic migrants tend to follow the opportunities – why go to a country with high unemployment or low wages?
For the United Kingdom in recent years, there have been plenty of vacancies to be filled. Brexit led to an exodus of Europeans, opening up jobs for willing workers from further afield, whilst an aging population created vacancies in health and social care. And so, Conservative administrations issued more and more work visas to fill the gaps in the workforce whilst, simultaneously, stoking up concerns about all of the foreigners entering the country. It was truly cynical, and it is no coincidence that a number of the key figures responsible for the increased numbers of migrants have sidled over to Reform UK where they can blame others for the consequences of decisions they blithely waved through at the time.
But migration does bring with it dilemmas to be solved. Housing, education and infrastructure require investment, and supply and demand issues impact on inflation, particularly in terms of house prices. The Conservatives rather ignored that, failing to address the housing market and leaving it to the private sector to deal with.
Ironically, the rapid fall in net migration over the past three years, allied to government steps to dissuade more people from applying to come here, means that the supposed problem is effectively solving itself, leading to a new set of problems – how do we fill emerging vacancies in key employment sectors? What is a necessary and sustainable level of net migration for the United Kingdom? And that’s a debate that politicians don’t really want to have. Given that the British public have some pretty wild ideas about migration and ethnicity already, that probably shouldn’t come as a surprise. Convincing voters that you need net inward migration to keep the economy on the rails is a challenging sell, and would be at the best of times, and these really aren’t the best of times.
Now, I’m not an economist or an expert on manpower planning, so if you were to ask me what would be appropriate, I’d have to say that I haven’t a clue. But there is a sense that, even if politicians don’t feel able to have a national conversation on the subject, they ought to be taking a holistic view of the economy and public services in order to build capacity necessary to support the changing population. Instead, we see the policy equivalent of pushing a piece of string – it moves, but probably not in the direction you’d want it to.
And whilst I have some sympathy with Oliver’s conclusions, the British public’s response to polling on migration does suggest that many of our fellow citizens have some fairly exaggerated ideas when it comes to the scale of the problem. So, by all means address the actual challenges that migration (or the lack of it) brings, but stick to the real problems, not those invented by those too dishonest to admit their real reasons for objecting.
* Mark Valladares is the Monday Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice.
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17 Comments
“ Now, I’m not an economist or an expert on manpower planning, so if you were to ask me what would be appropriate, I’d have to say that I haven’t a clue”
From the contradictory comments I read on this site, I think this position is common. Some argue that we need more immigration to fill vacancies. Others argue that young people are unable to find jobs due to lack of vacancies. I would argue that in a small number of specialist sectors, we do need to attract highly skilled people from other countries, but that we should not be using immigration to fill low skilled or starter level jobs. Employers may argue that they need immigrants to take low paid jobs because the alternative would be them being forced to increase wages, but we should never accept immigration as a way of keep wage rates lower than the market would otherwise dictate.
I agree completely but its going to take more than Political Parties on The Left talking honestly about the pros & cons of migration, we need to educate the public about all the things they ” know ” that are wrong while fighting Parties on the Right who want to go on telling lies.
Current Projections suggest that we should reach Net Emigration by the end of the Year, that ought to give us an opportunity to Refresh the National Conversation on Migration & challenge the Right Wing Establishment .
Some things will get worse, I don’t see that Reform will be left with any choice other than to move Right & call for Mass Deportation of People already settled here & parts of The Media may follow them.
It’s a wonder the country didn’t come to a standstill prior to 2019. Nobody to work in hospitals, dispense medicine, serve tea and scones, and wash cars. We have 1.75 million claiming ESA, we should start there first.
@Chloe – “It’s a wonder the country didn’t come to a standstill prior to 2019”
Not really. We had higher net immigration throughout most of the 2010s than we did in 2025. A lot of opinions on immigration seem to be distorted by the anomaly that was the ‘Boris Wave’…
Chloe,
The fact that there are 1.5 million people on ESA doesn’t really tell you much about the viability of bringing them back into the workforce.
Are they capable of doing the vacant jobs, are they in the right place, would obliging them to move across the country to find work do more harm than good? For example, I’m not driving my car from Ipswich to, say, Darlington, so that someone can clean it.
The hospitality industry in the South East struggles to find staff, yet housing is so expensive that nobody could credibly be expected to move into the area for minimum wage jobs.
And, of course, prior to 2019, we had freedom of movement within the European Union, which meant that workers from Eastern and Central Europe were willing to come here and fill vacancies.
But, instead of a simplistic, rather harsh approach to the problem, perhaps we’d be better off acknowledging the complexities of the issue?
A real-world data point. I recently recruited for an apprenticeship in my business – £25k, four days’ work plus one day’s training, salary part-subsidised by the council for local young people. With a million young people out of work, I expected a flood. The council found three candidates worth interviewing. That is the disconnect nobody talks about: the jobs are there, the young people are there, and the pipeline between them barely functions. Before we argue about the right level of migration, shouldn’t we ask why that pipeline delivers so little?
@Pawel Urbanski
“That is the disconnect nobody talks about: the jobs are there, the young people are there, and the pipeline between them barely functions. Before we argue about the right level of migration, shouldn’t we ask why that pipeline delivers so little?”
Might the secondary education system be overly focussed on getting young people into university? Maybe leaving those not so inclined left out?
Might more focus on getting those lfet out young people into basic jobs in say building trades help?
@Nonconformistradical – I think that’s a big part of it. Everything in schools points at university, and those not heading that way get remarkably little attention. But what struck me in our interviews was not a lack of ambition. It was the basics: reasoning through a problem, simple numbers, organising your own week. Trades and apprenticeships are a great route, but they’re skilled work, and they need those same foundations. That’s where I’d start.
@Mark Valladares
“ The hospitality industry in the South East struggles to find staff, yet housing is so expensive that nobody could credibly be expected to move into the area for minimum wage jobs.”
Does that not apply to everyone irrespective of whether they currently live elsewhere in the country or abroad and wishing to migrate to the UK? The difference, therefore, is not how expensive the housing market is but how motivated people are to move – and people living on benefits while ‘looking for employment’ are less motivated to move for employment that people living in poorer circumstances abroad.
Mark; If a Nigerian care worker in her early twenties can travel 4000 miles to work for just above the minimum wage, & reside in an HMO locally near the hospital – what’s so complex about an unemployed British national taking up such an opportunity. We hear so many plaudits on here as regards foreign workers taking low paid jobs within the care industry. Is it beneath those on ESA/UC .
Jana,
A fair point, and I perhaps didn’t express that precisely enough, although the financial incentive to move from, say Nigeria, to the UK is rather greater than it is to move within the UK.
Living in an HMO when you’re single, or willing to accept poor housing in order to set money aside or send it home, is perhaps less straightforward if you have dependents, or support networks you rely upon.
Chloe,
I don’t think that anyone is awarding plaudits. But, given that vacancies, in particular, in the social care sector, need to be filled, employers will do what they must to provide those services.
Is that an ideal solution? Of course it isn’t, but we don’t live in a perfect world and there are few instantaneous solutions.
I think there is a real problem with NEETs. When I was young, and indeed when my children were, we were prepared to take any job that paid money whilst continuing looking for the job we really wanted. Rather than be on the dole, we took jobs below our ‘status’ to keep there cash coming in. My son is doing that now. Today’s youngsters seem disinclined to do so. That is a problem in need of a solution.
Before we left the EU I knew many Europeans who came to the UK to do the ‘shitty’ jobs in care homes, hospitals and the like. I knew a Greek lawyer, who could earn more working in a dementia home in the UK than as a lawyer in Greece, assuming he could actually get a job there.
If we are not going to stand up and tell the truth about immigration, who is? Once upon a time we stood out against racist legislation like the Keyna Immigrants Act. Apparently we can’t do that now for fear of offending people in our held and target seats.
“the jobs are there, the young people are there………”
It’s not so simple. We aren’t talking about fitting round pegs into round holes.
The jobs are only there for those who have a work history. Employers will pay slightly more to employ someone they know will reliably turn up. So we have a problem that many can’t get a job because they have never had one previously. We’re creating an ever larger pool of unemployed who aren’t easily employed. They aren’t the ‘reserve army of labour’ in economists’ jargon.
There needs to be action on both the demand and the supply side. According to NEF research, see link below, “social-security recipients are more likely to live in areas with fewer vacancies and lower-quality jobs.” We probably knew that already. What we don’t know is how to go about tackling the supply side.
A liberal kind hearted inclination to try to tackle poverty by increasing welfare benefits has possibly made things worse, at least in this respect, in the post war period. We don’t need to go back to allowing a high level of poverty to develop; but, we should require that those who need help also do something to help themselves. If there’s a need to retrain then they should do that. If there’s a need for jobs to be done ……
I’m not suggesting ‘workfare’. The jobs must pay the legal minimum rate.
https://neweconomics.org/2026/05/over-1-million-young-people-are-now-neets-heres-what-to-do-next
Here’s an extract from a Jonathan Liew article in today’s Guardian (4th August):
” . . .[W]hat if migration is only a problem to those who want it to be? What if we started seeing the mass movement of people less as an existential threat and more as a simple inevitability of human existence?”
I would expect to see more of this attitude on LDV rather than the airing of the “difficulties” migrants present and how to deal with the “legitimate concerns” of the bigots, which, sadly, are the tenor of most of the comments on this and Oliver Jaques’s article. What on earth is happening to the party’s vision? We are (like the late Tony Benn, but better) here to be signposts rather than weathervanes.
We’re talking about two different things here. The reasons our potential workforce doesn’t fit with what the economy and society require are one thing, and the use of the fear of foreigners for political advantage, by Farage and political activists of his type is another. I’m sure we’ve all found, perhaps while canvassing, that no amount of economic reality shifts the opinions of those say our island is being “invaded”. Their views manifest as racist or as a belief that the British are superior to other nationalities, but the underlying emotions are fear, resentment and inadequacy relating to their own lives. Having those emotions respected, even by idiots like Farage, is validation, and has nothing to do with the logic about demographics or the usefulness of incorporating foreign culture.
‘underlying emotions are fear, resentment and inadequacy relating to their own lives’
Are you saying the residents of Crowborough or Bicester who’ve protested in significant numbers in regards to the placement of asylum seekers – are inadequate. Or should they be like the communities in many of the post industrial towns, like the one I was born and grew up in, who’ve witness unprecedented change – not for the better may I add – tough suck it up.
Perhaps my most illiberal “opinion” is that automatic freedom of movement for immigrants is possibly a bad thing*. I remember speaking with a recent refugee who wanted to move away to London due to the extra support they get there, but everyone of working age wants to move to London because of the investment there, except older people who want to retire in the countryside.
You end up with working age people moving away from areas so they lose workers and older people moving in so the council has higher levels of responsibility for adult social care. Burnham’s plan for areas keeping tax could make this worse.
*I am not even convinced by this myself. But there is a real problem in investment being so focused on a few areas in how this creates deprivation, which subsequently creates tension aimed at any incomers. Regardless of who they are or how unfair that tension is.