Immigration Rules: Economic Impact

Question

What assessment has been made of the impact on the economy of my proposed changes to immigration rules?

Question

I thank the Home Secretary for her response. We have 104 different nationalities working in Winchester hospital, throughout Hampshire over one third of the workers in the social care sector are born outside the EU, and we know statistically that we are more likely to be cared for or treated by an immigrant than we are to be waiting behind one for a GP appointment. Does the Home Secretary recognise that the current visa rules for healthcare workers are driving away many of the people who are keeping our NHS and social care services running?

Question

Hospitality, social care and the tech sector are all vital sources of employment and economic stability in my constituency. The companies in those sectors are telling me that, despite their efforts to recruit domestically first, the Home Secretary's changes to indefinite leave to remain are making it very difficult for them to attract the skilled workforce from abroad that they need to keep the sector going. Will the Home Secretary reconsider the changes in the light of that impact and lighten the regulations to make it possible for these companies to survive?

Question

It is a fact to be proud of that four of the world's 10 greatest universities in the global rankings are in the UK, including Imperial College London's White City campus in my constituency. We punch way above our population weight and our universities are genuine engines of growth. However, evidence shows that the withdrawal of the post-study work visa coupled with the rumours about changes in indefinite leave to remain are driving some of those brightest brains who have produced such statistics to competitor countries. Will my right hon. Friend meet me, education Ministers and my two vice-chancellors to thrash out a solution? There are real problems, but we do not want to scare off genuine innovators and wealth creators.

Question

In Hartlepool we are reversing 30 years of globalisation and taking advantage of the unprecedented falls in immigration, thanks to this Home Secretary, and training our own, whether through our Health and Social Care Academy, our civil engineering academy, our centre of excellence for welding or our nuclear trades academy. Does the Secretary of State agree that rather than seeing it as an economic threat, falling immigration is an economic opportunity to train our own?

Question

The latest estimates indicate that 627,000 non-EU migrants, mostly from low-income countries, came to the UK between December 2024 and December 2025. Meanwhile, 61,000 Brits aged 16 to 24 left the UK, as did another 65,000 aged 25 to 34. In recent years, for every young Briton who has been employed, 27 young migrants from outside the EU have also joined the workforce. Does the Home Secretary accept that mass migration has wrecked economic opportunity for young people? How will that inform any changes that she makes to the immigration rules, given that almost two thirds of a million non-EU migrants came to this country last year?