THE Commons Scottish Affairs Committee has today launched an inquiry into how effective UK immigration policy is in Scotland.
The committee, now with a Unionist majority after June’s snap General Election, will examine how well the current system meets the nation's needs and look at how easy it will be for non-UK citizens to move to Scotland after Brexit.
Immigration has become an increasing bone of contention. While policy controlled by the UK Government, Scottish ministers have increasingly called for the power to be devolved to allow a more tailored system to be created north of the border given Scotland’s so-called “demographic timebomb”.
The committee said a key part of its inquiry would focus on the impact of the UK leaving the EU and the likely implications for the free movement of EU nationals.
It will examine the importance of low-skilled or seasonal immigration to the Scottish economy and investigate how this could be replicated post-Brexit.
The SNP’s Pete Wishart, the committee chairman, said: "Scotland is proud to be a multi-cultural nation whose population is made up from people all across the world and it is widely acknowledged that continued migration from EU and non-EU nations is essential to our future success.
"In the last Parliament, this committee repeatedly heard that the current immigration system doesn't meet the needs of Scotland and Brexit raises new questions about how easy it will be for EU nationals to move here in the future.
"This inquiry will seek to establish what Scotland's future migration needs will be and how these can be met," he added.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel