𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

A former Conservative Justice Minister has called for ministers to attract high-skilled migrants to the UK in a bid to boost growth.

Sir David Gauke backed calls for the government to invest what employers pay in immigration charges directly into training British workers.

The ex Cabinet Minister, who served under Theresa May, said: “A strong economy should be the nation’s priority. It is only through a strong economy that we can improve living standards, fund our public services and give the next generation the opportunities the last one had. A serious, selective immigration policy is one of the levers that helps deliver it.

“Immigration has to be controlled, and public trust in the whole system depends on secure and well-managed borders. But if the debate stops there, we miss the point. The question that matters for growth is whether Britain is competing hard enough for the migrants who create wealth. On the current evidence, the answer is no.

“There is much that could be said about the reforms of recent years. Some were necessary because there were too many coming here who were not net contributors.

“But numbers alone are not a strategy, and it is possible to bring net migration down while at the same time deterring the entrepreneurs and specialists the economy needs and doing nothing to rebuild the domestic pipeline. There is a serious argument to be had about how immigration policy can serve growth.”

The Prosper UK think tank sets out the arguments in a paper released on Monday called An Immigration Plan for Economic Growth.

Net migration has already halved, dropping to 171,000 in the year to December 2025.

Meanwhile Home Office data showed that Skilled Worker visa applications from main applicants dropped 40% to 33,100 in the year ending April 2026 compared to the previous year.

The think tank said: “The harder question is whether the reforms delivering that fall are also driving away the specialists, senior executives and entrepreneurs the economy depends on.”

Around 136,000 more British nationals left the UK than arrived in 2025 and the gap has widened every year since 2022, while more than a million young people aged 16 to 24 are not in employment, education or training.