Britain will spend a record $4 billion to increase training opportunities, as part of an effort to train locals to fill gaps in the labor market and reduce reliance on foreign workers, the government said on Tuesday.
The investment will “refocus the skills landscape towards young, domestic talent” by creating 120,000 new training opportunities in key sectors, including construction, engineering, health and social care and digital, the government’s education department said in a statement.
More than one in five working-age Britons are without a job and are not searching for employment opportunities. The latest official data shows this inactivity rate at 21.4% after steadily rising since the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The Labour government, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, has been under pressure to reduce immigration following the recent local election success of the right-wing anti-immigration Reform UK party.
The government has since revealed plans to tighten citizenship rules, restrict skilled worker visas to graduate-level jobs and push companies to train locals.
With the new immigration policy, Starmer declared that the experiment in “open borders” was over.
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On Tuesday, the government announced plans for a 32% hike in the immigration skills charge, designed to discourage firms from hiring foreign workers, that would deliver up to 45,000 additional training places to “upskill the domestic workforce and reduce reliance on migration” in priority sectors.
Businesses have said they cannot hire enough workers locally, warning that the stricter immigration rules would hurt the economy unless there was also a fundamental overhaul of Britain’s skills training system.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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