The Government has announced a raft of further changes to the Immigration Rules affecting various visa routes. The headlines are the closure of the Start Up visa, replacing the current Innovator visa route, and increases to salary thresholds under the Skilled Worker, Global Business Mobility, Scale-up and Seasonal Worker routes. We’ll talk to immigration specialist Shara Pledger about the impact the changes will have on businesses.
Shara flagged up the changes in a post on Linked-In where she sets out the increases to salaries required sponsored workers which take effect 12 April. The general salary threshold for Skilled Workers will increase from £25,600 to £26,200 (and up to £20,960 for new entrants) and the hourly rate rises to £10.75 per hour. The going rate salaries for individual roles will also be changing - some up, some down. There is a similar story in Global Business Mobility: Senior and Specialist Worker with increases £45,800 and £24,220 respectively, and Scale-up increases to £34,600. None of these changes is retrospective, so something to focus on moving forward.
So, let’s get a view on the changes and the likely impact they’ll have. Earlier Shara joined me by video-link from Manchester and I started by asking her about the Scale Up visa which she describes as unpopular. So why is that?
Shara Pledger: “The Scale Up visa hasn't really worked in the way that the government originally intended. The intentions were there to make it a very popular and attractive route for these sort of new and dynamic businesses but the number of hurdles that have really been put in their path to qualify for one of these visas has really negated all of those good intentions. Scale Up visas are quite difficult to qualify for, there are a lot of criteria that needs to be met by the individual organisation, and also we have this sort of slightly strange hybrid approach when it comes to Scale up where the business is sort of taking all of the risks, they're making all of the investment in terms of getting their licence and sponsoring this individual but, unlike Skilled Worker, the individual is only tied to them, really, for about six months and after that a Scale Up worker is able to go out and get another job or do something on their own back and they don't necessarily need to have that same level of support to continue their residence in the UK. So, we do end up with Scale Up, then, with this more complicated, more expensive, route with potentially fewer benefits for the actual organisation and so it means that if you've got the toss-up between looking at traditional Skilled Worker sponsorship or Scale Up sponsorship, it's difficult to identify why you might decide that Scale Up is the route for you.”
Joe Glavina: “If we turn to the Start Up visa. This is due to close to new applicants very soon, on 13 April. Why is that? Is it significant?”
Shara Pledger: “It probably isn't going to be so much of an issue that the Start Up route is going to go. It is being removed in terms of existing on its own, but what's really happening is that it is being rolled up into Innovator, so we'll still have that approach of really welcoming people into the Innovator route. What, of course, will remain are the issues with Innovator itself. Start Up was traditionally always something that was fairly easy to get into, but then actually maintaining that through into Innovator and, crucially, maintaining Innovator through to settlement are where the real problems begin and none of that is currently changing. So, while the Home Office is really pushing this as a relaunch to Innovator and making that scheme just overall more streamlined by sort of separating the Start Up and the innovator, and now we're just going to have that one approach, it really isn't addressing the actual core issue with that particular route, unfortunately.”
Joe Glavina: “Can we turn to the Global Mobility route. The changes which have been announced are on the back of the UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement as I understand it?”
Shara Pledger: “This is quite a good example, actually, of how the Home Office has really sort of pushed and then lauded these trade agreements that have been made, but the actual practical impact on the immigration rules is pretty limited. So, as you point out, we do see it in the Global Mobility route and this very limited ability in terms of Australians with slightly more capability than perhaps, for example, their counterparts from places like New Zealand or the US, or wherever it happens to be. But we also see it in things like the Youth Mobility Scheme which is now being extended to allow in a greater range of people from New Zealand, for example. But all of these are sort of quite incremental gains – so things like a slightly easier process, a slightly wider age bracket, that kind of thing – they’re not hugely significant when it comes to the actual routes themselves. What we don't yet have is some actual new immigration route that has been arranged as a result of these trade agreements. Even if we look at something like the Indian Youth Mobility Scheme, so that young professionals scheme which has only just taken effect despite it having been pushed in and praised by Priti Patel - so that gives you an indication of how many Home Secretaries ago that was - we don't really have huge numbers in that sense either. So, it's not really something that's actually a hugely practical difference when it comes to the immigration rules and how they operate day to day.”
Joe Glavina: “Finally, Shara, the ETA scheme – Electronic travel authorisation. It appears to be geared to holiday-makers visiting the UK, so will it help businesses?
Shara Pledger: “Yes and no. Electronic travel authorisation is an extra step for people, so this isn't something that's going to replace traditional visit visas and if you have somebody who's visiting the UK for a business visit, and they currently need to apply for a visa, they almost certainly will still need to take that approach when it comes to travel in the future. What we will see with ETA, the electronic travel authorisation, is that people who currently do not require those visas will now need to register for this visa waiver, effectively. So, it will actually be an extra step, but it will be a very important step when it's introduced and what we can foresee is that if this is introduced steadily over time, which it looks like maybe the approach that the Home Office is going to take, there is real potential to catch people out here. If you consider people like European nationals, US nationals, Australian nationals, for example, these individuals who have never needed to apply to anything before entering the UK as a visitor before, this sudden requirement to have registered and received this authorisation before boarding that plane could be the thing that actually scuppers their plans so it is something that businesses really need to be alive to because what they don't want is to plan a conference, or something along those lines, and have these individuals visiting for it and then suddenly finding they didn't make a straightforward application that they needed to, but plenty of time to plan for this. ETA is not going to start to take effect until much further towards the end of this year. It won't really start kicking in there for other jurisdictions until well into 2024, most likely. So, it really isn't something that's going to be the case of - you didn't need one today but you will need one next Monday.”
The Home Office’s Statement of Changes setting out in detail all of the changes was published on 9 March. We have put a link to it in the transcript of this programme.
LINKS
- Link to Home Office Statement of Changes dated 9 March 2023
