Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-10-05
Topic: Culture
Deborah Bull (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, it is a pleasure to add my name to Amendment 25, which brings together in one place my former professional life in the cultural sector and my current life within higher education. In noting that, I also note my interests as recorded in the register. In both those sectors, international mobility is crucial to success. Ideas and innovations, be they scientific or artistic, are no respecters of international borders. Indeed, it is well evidenced that international mobility enhances the quality of ideas and the impact of outcomes, with researchers and artists reporting that visiting and working in other countries helps them form collaborations, develop new ideas and gain new technical skills and expertise Universities are one of the best examples that we have of global Britain. According to the Higher Education Staff Statistics, nearly 30% of the academic staff in the UK are from overseas. The Government’s global talent visa is a very welcome recognition of the importance of international collaboration to research and innovation. Nevertheless, there are already a number of problems regarding the immigration status of academics, and, as we have heard, UK visas are among the most expensive in the world. The global talent visa costs 15 times more than a similar visa in Germany, and my noble friend Lord Patel has painted a very real picture of the costs for a young academic who wants to move their family here. Unless overall costs associated with visas are reduced to levels that are reasonable, proportionate and internationally competitive when compared to those of other research-intensive nations, "global Britain" risks becoming "little Britain" The concerns of the cultural sector about the loss of mobility beyond 2020 have been well rehearsed in this Chamber, and they have been laid out again today with great clarity by my noble friend Lord Clancarty. The continuation of short-term mobility between the UK and the EU emerged in an Arts Council survey of 1,000 stakeholders as a top priority post Brexit. It was more important even than the loss of EU funding, which has been worth approximately £40 million per year. The UK’s creative success has been shaped by the opportunities that mobility offers for UK creatives to develop their skills abroad and for UK-based companies to easily access talent from our nearest geographical neighbours. In the most economically productive parts of the sector, domestic skills gaps mean that up to 30% of staff have been recruited from the EU, and it is hard to see, even before Covid, how the creative industries will thrive in the new immigration regime that is in front of us today It is a regime that promises access to the brightest and the best, but which defines those qualities on the basis of salary and a points-based system that is ill matched to the characteristics of the sector, in which low pay does not equal low skills and where the training routes—I speak to this personally—do not lead to postgraduate qualifications that are points-scoring. It is also a regime that yet again ignores the importance of freelancers, who offer vital flexibility to a sector that is made up almost entirely of businesses that employ fewer than 10 people. As we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, those organisations will be hard pushed to meet the financial and administrative burdens associated with the employment of freelancers The UK’s creative sector is often pointed to as a major agent of soft power, but its contributions extend beyond global reputation to the economy and to employment right across the UK. The Centre for Cities reports a disconnect between the Government’s levelling-up agenda and the new immigration system, with cities in the greater south-east expected to gain the most from the new rules for so-called high-skilled migrants. Understanding the impact of this immigration regime on a sector that, unlike most, is delivering growth in almost every region of the UK, becomes even more important in the light of this I am afraid that I have seen little to reassure me that, across either research and innovation or the arts and culture, there is genuine understanding within government of the nature and specificities of these sectors, their workforce and the structures and systems on which success has been built. This amendment seeks to ensure that proper focus is given to the impact of reduced mobility on two sectors that we can truly claim are world leading, and will help to ensure that they remain so into the future.