Ex top Tory calls for boost in highly skilled migrants to spur growth | Politics | News
A former Conservative Justice Secretary has called on ministers to attract highly skilled immigrants to the UK in a bid to boost growth.
Sir David Gauke has backed calls for the government to invest the amount employers pay in immigration fees directly into training British workers.
Former Cabinet Minister who served under Theresa May said: “A strong economy must be the country’s priority. It is only through a strong economy that we can improve living standards, fund our public services and provide the next generation with the same opportunities that the previous generation had. A serious, selective immigration policy is one of the tools to help achieve this.
“Immigration must be controlled and public confidence in the whole system depends on secure and well-managed borders. But if the debate ends there we would be missing the point. The important question for growth is whether Britain is competing hard enough for wealth-creating immigrants. On the available evidence the answer is no.”
“There is a lot to be said about the reforms of recent years. Some of them were necessary because there were too many people coming here who were not net contributors.
“But numbers alone are not a strategy, and it is possible to reduce net migration while at the same time deterring the entrepreneurs and experts the economy needs and doing nothing to rebuild the domestic pipeline. There is a serious debate about how immigration policy can serve growth.”
The Prosper UK think tank lays out the arguments in a paper called Immigration Plan for Economic Growth, published on Monday.
Net migration has already halved, falling to 171,000 in the year to December 2025.
Meanwhile, Home Office data showed Skilled Worker visa applications from main applicants fell by 40% to 33,100 in the year ending April 2026 compared to the previous year.
The think tank said: “The harder question is whether the reforms taking place this autumn will also alienate the experts, senior managers and entrepreneurs on whom the economy depends.”
Around 136,000 more British nationals left the UK than arrived in 2025, with the gap widening every year since 2022; More than one million young people aged 16 to 24 are neither employed nor in education.
