Textile Services Association issues Government report on migration. A Government report has been issued by the TSA to their members. The Government’s migration advisory committee was asked to align migration policy with the Government’s industrial strategy.

The full report presents evidence suggesting that, despite the significant scale of migration from EU countries over the past 15 years, the overall economic impacts have been relatively small with the main effect being an increase in population. The report found some evidence suggesting that migration has slightly reduced employment opportunities for the UK-born especially for the lower-skilled.

The report also found limited evidence showing a small negative effect of migration on earnings at the lower end of the wage distribution and a small positive effect at the upper end.

Other key findings include that the committee do not see compelling reasons to offer a different set of rules to EEA and non-EEA citizens, unless the UK wishes to use migration in negotiations. They also concluded there were no grounds for setting up sector-specific schemes for lower-skilled workers, with the exception of seasonal agricultural workers, and the report rejected calls for a scheme tailored to social care workers, saying the sector’s problems with recruitment and retention went much further than the supply of labour.