IT Essentials: The long road back to a high-skill workforce
A series of decisions have hamstrung the UK's ability to compete in the global market
New rules to crack down on legal immigrants to the UK will do no good if trained British workers aren't there to replace them.
The new earnings threshold, which anyone hoping to move to the UK will have to meet or exceed before being considered for a visa, has the right goal but the wrong approach.
The idea is to stop low-paid migrants taking jobs in the UK, replacing them with skilled, highly paid British workers and driving average salaries up at the same time.
Nice idea. As I argued when the news was announced, as a country we have become addicted to cheap foreign labour. That, combined with a series of staggering economic shocks in the last 15 years, has suppressed average salaries and purchasing power across the board.
So, the goal is sound - in theory. But while the implementation is laser-focused on one of the Conservative Party's loudest talking points - immigration - it ignores the other key piece of the puzzle: education. Where are those skilled British workers going to come from?
Brexit, the pandemic and changes to IR35 rules have all affected the supply of existing IT professionals in the UK. At the same time, traditional routes in through degrees and apprenticeships are at risk.
Tuition fees for British students have been frozen at just over £9,000 a year since 2017, leaving universities forced to recruit lucrative international students - who pay, on average, £22,000 a year - to make up their funding shortfall.
Allegations of international students being prioritised for places have been rife for years, and the issue only keeps growing: international students contributed more than a third of total income at 25 universities in the 2021-22 academic year, and more than half at two.
As for apprenticeships and retraining, I've already talked about the lack of support available at length.
If the government wants the UK to compete on the world stage using its own talent, which is surely the goal of the new policy, this can't continue.
Restricting immigration may drive up wages in theory, but failing to invest in education and training for domestic workers will only widen skills gaps and talent shortages. If the government is committed to tighter immigration controls, it should couple them with increased support for apprenticeships, vocational training and higher education if it hopes to build a skilled British workforce that can thrive in the global economy - not simply turn off the labour supply tap and hope it all works out.
What to read this week
We talked to a group of 10 of the UK's top IT heavyweights, who put their forecasting caps on and made some predictions about what the next year will hold for UK IT. Expect AI, of course, but also movement on regulation, cloud alternatives and the rise of the citizen developer.
John Leonard has also talked bots, bots and more bots with Duncan Boyer at train manufacturer Alstom Group, which has managed to automated the "hated task" of manual data entry - with great results.