The Confederation of British Industry, the UK’s foremost business lobby group has called on government to temporarily ease post-Brexit immigration rules to help businesses struggling with acute people and skills shortages.
The CBI states that government needs to immediately update its ‘shortage occupations list’ to include areas where employers are finding it difficult to recruit people to fill a growing mountain of vacancies. Going on to warn that a ‘perfect storm’ of people and skills shortages is evident from the easing of Covid restrictions already underway. The crisis is growing and spreading across many industry sectors and the CBI’s view is that a failure to act will place the UK’s economic recovery from the pandemic at severe risk.
Lord Karan Bilimoria, President, CBI – By Frank-JurgenThe CBI speaks on behalf of circa 190,000 UK businesses of all sizes and across all business sectors, and is extremely concerned that all too many members now face unnecessary challenges ahead of reopening.
The business group is encouraging members to invest in further developing our domestic workforce, but emphasised the need for government to reflect now on its post-Brexit immigration policy to prevent chronic skills shortages from undermining the UK’s economic recovery from the pandemic.
Commercial burdens are most worryingly increasing in the hospitality, road haulage, and food and drink industries, as a wide variety of options to mitigate the crisis are proving ineffective. Timing is the main concern, as the immediacy of the issue impacts on businesses ability to trade.
Lord Bilimoria, the CBI President was clear in his views saying the immigration system needed to be updated to reflect the labour shortages.
Hospitality is now reporting daily on venues unable to reopen partially which alongside the new Health Secretary’s commitment to a full and irreversible end of Covid restrictions on 19 July seems a goal impossible to reach.
Robert Richardson FIH, Chief Executive, The Institute of HospitalityRobert Richardson, Chief Executive of the Institute of Hospitality was equally as clear as his counterpart Lord Bilimoria. Richardson told us: “Hospitality has been calling for the easing of the post Brexit immigration system for some time now. Commercial reality and the UK’s economic priority to get back to some semblance of normality has to take precedence over any reluctance to implement a temporary relaxation enabling such. There are many short, medium and long term issues our industry needs to address, including education around hospitality as a career of choice for homegrown talent, but none of these can remedy the human resource crisis we now face. The petition already launched to remedy the problem now needs the full support of the whole hospitality industry. We request government to resource us to reopen fully and power the UK economy to recover.
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Hospitality & Catering News: IoH backs the CBI’s call on government to temporarily ease post-Brexit immigration rules. – 30 June 2021 – IoH backs the CBI’s call on government to temporarily ease post-Brexit immigration rules.
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