Recommendation 10

Despite this, we were concerned that collaboration was not effective and that there had been insufficient consideration of the impacts of rule changes. In particular, we were not convinced that there had been sufficient collaboration between the Home Office and departments on the role of immigration in sectoral workforce strategies.17 One result of this is that the Home Office has not had a full understanding of how the Skilled Worker route works for different regions of the United Kingdom, including the devolved nations.18 For example, we highlighted a mismatch between the needs of the care sector—which has skill shortages in rural areas—and where most migrant workers are brought in to work.19 We urged the Home Office to better understand how the route is working across the whole of the United Kingdom, working with departments, and relevant bodies, to develop an up-to-date understanding of the skill shortages and salary levels across the devolved nations. The Home Office accepted that there was more it could do to join-up across government and identified the need to formalise processes for cross-government working at an official level to improve the effectiveness of collaboration.20