For Britain’s digital community, the quashing of Home Secretary Theresa May’s proposal to deport international students following their graduation is an important milestone.
The significance of a diverse and competitive workforce to Britain’s tech sector cannot be overstated; from burgeoning start-ups to established giants, the bedrock of the British tech industry’s success is its people – both ‘home-grown’ and from overseas.
Talent makes clusters
Attracting the best of the world’s tech talent to London is especially pertinent as London continues to develop and grow into a world-leading tech hub. At the turn of the millennium a talented technology graduate would have instinctively looked to Silicon Valley. But in the decade and a half since, the rise of Latin American, Asian and European tech hubs has seen the Valley’s monopoly on tech innovation broken.
As a result, from Bogotá to Berlin and from Santiago to Stockholm, the race to attract highly-skilled tech talent to the world’s leading technology hubs is getting more competitive and challenging. In the last several years London has joined this group of dynamic global tech hubs, but if it is to stay an industry leader in the likes of fintech, it must have access to the brightest and best from across the world.
Otherwise it risks having its progress decline and innovation stall.
Who reaps the rewards of education?
It is unacceptable that talented technology students could come to the UK to develop their skills at British universities, only to have their visas removed, unable to enter the technology job market. The result would be a drain of domestically educated foreign talent to rival technology centres, which would reap the rewards of their skills.
And already the negative rhetoric surrounding immigration and visas is impacting the sector; many talented Indian tech graduates, for example, are returning home once they graduate. And many potentially talented students are choosing not to study in the UK, put off by visa restrictions once they graduate.
Not just a tech issue
Of course, there is no doubt that the long-term solution to ensuring London’s technology sector is furnished with the talent it requires is to develop it domestically. But supply still cannot currently keep up with demand. By 2020 it is estimated there will be a deficit of 300,000 digitally-skilled workers in London, and if the UK cannot find 750,000 digitally-skilled workers by 2017 it will potentially miss out on £2bn a year.
This is therefore an issue not just for the tech sector itself but for the economy as a whole.
A survey of Tech London Advocates last year found that a lack of talent (43%) and immigration legislation (10%) were two of the biggest impediments to London’s technology future. These findings were reinforced by Sherry Coutu’s ScaleUp Report, which found that 42% of scale-up chief executives saw finding talent to hire for jobs as their top challenge.
London First’s recently launched ‘London 2036: An Agenda for Jobs and Growth’ also argued that for London to sustain growth over the coming decades, the capital will ‘need to attract and welcomes the best talent from around the world to study and to work’.
Politicians such as Theresa May need to strike a balance between implementing sensible immigration regulations and supporting the growth of British business. Tech startups and scaleups need world-class talent and world-class policy to cement our position as a world-class tech destination.