Select committee: Scottish Affairs Committee
Recommendation 8
Second Report - Coronavirus and Scotland
Published 22 Oct 2020
Paragraph 49
Addressed to Scotland Office
Scottish Affairs Committee Coronavirus and Scotland All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
We acknowledge there are staffing issues for the health and social care sector and that the Migration Advisory Committee did not have enough information when making the decisions about the Shortage Occupation List for Scotland. We welcome the recent development of including senior care workers and nursing assistants to the Shortage Occupation List but do not believe this goes far enough. We recommend that the Migration Advisory Committee include all key health and social care workers on the Shortage Occupation List for Scotland. We also urge the Scottish Government to do more to encourage a larger share of migrants to the UK to live in Scotland.
From: Scottish Affairs Committee, Second Report - Coronavirus and Scotland (HC 895), paragraph 49, 22 October 2020
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 1 February 2021 (deadline 22 December 2020).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government responds to the Committee's recommendations on intergovernmental working, economic support, immigration and exports, setting out existing arrangements and some commitments, while deferring several decisions.
- On the public inquiry, the government says it "notes" the Committee's recommendation on terms of reference, that responding to the detail now "would be premature", and that it will respond further "in due course".
- On reviewing economic support, HM Treasury and HMRC have "committed to undertaking a detailed evaluation" of the job retention and self-employment schemes. The job retention findings will be published "by the end of 2021"; full self-employment evaluation data will not be available until 2022.
- On Shortage Occupation List recommendations, the government is "absolutely not rejecting" them but is "not immediately accepting" them. It will consider whether to implement "some or all" in immigration rules changes in 2021.
- On the Seasonal Workers Pilot, the government "notes" the Committee's findings and is "carefully considering" the pilot findings, hoping "to say more on this in due course".