The UK’s crackdown on legal migration won’t affect the tech industry – despite it facing a long-running skills shortage – the government’s tech minister has claimed.
Speaking to UKTN, Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy Saqib Bhatti said that despite recent policies from the Home Office designed to reduce migration into the UK, the government remains “committed” to encouraging foreign workers to support the UK tech industry.
“When it comes to legal migration, [the home secretary] was very clear, the numbers have been too high,” Bhatti said.
Despite this, Bhatti claimed that the tech department was “leading the charge” on “making sure we were still…attracting the best and brightest people from across the world”.
In December, Home Secretary James Cleverly introduced several measures to reduce migration into the UK, including raising the income threshold for overseas workers from £26,200 to £38,700, which is significantly higher than the national average salary of around £33,000....