The recommendations of the Migratory advisory committee

[DodgyAgent]

The MAC have been investigating skills shortages in relation to the issuing of Visas. They have proposed the tightening of rules surrounding the issuing of Visas for ICT workers. this should be welcomed.

https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...hing_FINAL.pdf

We make a number of recommendations to further strengthen the contribution of
the ICT route to UK plc. I set these out in three tranches: all ICT migrants;
conventional ICT channel; third-party contracting channel.
Concerning all ICTs
 all ICTs should be required to pay both the Immigration Health
Surcharge and the Immigration Skills Charge (except Skills Transfer
and Graduate trainees), ensuring consistency with migrant workers
under Tier 2 (General).
 the required prior experience with the employer should be raised from
one year to two years. This will help ensure that the transferee is
steeped in the culture of the company. We also recommend that
sponsors be required to enter a more detailed description of the role
on the Certificate of Sponsorship application form to ensure that the
role is sufficiently specialist.
 the Home Office and HMRC will wish to jointly examine whether or not
the present system of allowances and initial non-payment of national
insurance contributions confers a playing field tilted against British
workers.

[MrMarkyMark]

I predict a "skills shortage" if this is put into place.

Then it will be Bob Shawadiwadi to the rescue, again

[theroyale]

The document issued by the MAC was an interesting read. Broadly (apart from OPs highlights), they are looking to split out Tier 2 ICTs into "normal" ICTs, and ICTs being invoked for the express use of Third Party Contracting.

They extensively quote examples of Indian onsite-offshore software houses as high users of the Third Party Contracting type of Tier 2 ICT visas. And are suggesting future studies that may recommend a cap on this sort of visa (similar to the Tier-2 General cap that currently exists - around 20,700 a year if memory serves).

My personal take was that this was a case of the MAC getting into tariff/trade protectionism territory ("Why shouldn't UK-based software houses bag these contracts, why should we hire Indian software houses?"), rather than sticking to their remit of recommending meaningful ways to limit immigration. In the current scenario (post 2010 Tier-1 closure), most of these third party contractors leave the country at the end of their contracts anyway, so they do not actually add in any permanent way to the foreign-born population within the UK.

But hey, immigration is such a hot button subject at the moment that rationale has long since gone out the window...