Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, has said that the UK's interim cap on immigration from outside the EU is damaging to British business. He told the Financial Times that some companies were considering moving jobs abroad because they could not recruit the staff they needed. Mr Cable said he backs plans for a permanent cap from next April but wants it to be more flexible. The Home Office said the temporary cap, introduced in July, still allowed the brightest and best to enter the UK.
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It was announced that Home Secretary Theresa May would limit the number of non-EU workers allowed into the UK to 24,100 - down around 5% - between now and April 2011. Mr Cable told the newspaper that under the current measure, some businesses could not bring in the skilled, professional staff they needed to expand. He said: "I was talking to people in the City and there were two investment banks that recruit hundreds of people from the non-EU area, Indians and Americans. They were allowed only thirty to forty. They have moved some operations to Hong Kong."
Mr Cable added that he had a file full of examples of companies considering relocating jobs overseas because they could no longer bring in key staff and that was "very damaging" to British business. He said he did not dissent from the coalition agreement between the Conservatives and Lib Dems (which will see a permanent cap on non-EU immigration put in place from April), however he has campaigned for the cap to be applied flexibly so it can move up or down according to economic circumstances.
By criticising how this year's temporary cap is operating, Mr Cable is putting down a strong marker that he does not want the eventual limit on immigration to be set at too low a level. By speaking out ahead of the Liberal Democrat conference, he is likely to offer some comfort to those in his party who have been worried that Lib Dem ministers have not been doing enough to differentiate themselves from their Conservative colleagues.
