The home secretary is working on a plan to attract more overseas workers to move north of the border, the Commons has heard.
Parliament has been told that Yvette Cooper is considering how to implement such aims.
However, Home Office sources told The Herald it would not involve a separate Scottish visa, as one newspaper reported on Wednesday morning.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “This is not government policy and not something the Home Secretary is considering.”
John Grady, the MP for Glasgow East, told a Westminster Hall debate on Tuesday that Labour wanted to bring more workers to Scotland and that the UK government was working on proposals.
“Scottish Labour and the Labour Party are in favour of bringing talented people into Scotland, and the Scottish Government are welcome to work with us as we seek to ensure that that takes place,” he said.
“As I understand it, the home secretary is determined to ensure that it does, and I also understand that the migration advisory committee is looking at the issue carefully.”
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The migration advisory committee is an independent, non-statutory and non-departmental public body that advises the UK government on migration issues.
Mr Grady said that the only question was “how to do it” and that Labour ministers wanted to work “productively” with their SNP counterparts on a solution.
Mr Grady's intervention comes after Scottish Labour's deputy leader Dame Jackie Baillie revealed to the Herald on Sunday in June that a new Labour government would be open to talks with ministers in Edinburgh about a "Scottish visa" which would give limited immigration powers to Holyrood.
Last year, deaths in Scotland outnumbered births by 19,100, the largest difference on record, with the country’s population rising to its highest level because of overseas migration.
The population is getting older, with more than a fifth of Scotland’s population aged 65 and over, while 16 per cent are 15 or under. Experts have warned this could cause a crisis where there are not enough working-age people to pay the tax that covers the costs of caring for an ageing cohort.
Concerns have been raised previously about the prospect of people moving to the UK under a Scottish visa before relocating south to London or other large English cities.
It is believed that linking visas to Scottish tax codes, which are in place because of differing rates north and south of the border, would largely mitigate such a problem because people would then not be able to gain legal employment in England.
Stephen Gethins, the SNP MP for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, will on Thursday submit a private members bill for consideration in Westminster that would give Holyrood powers to establish a Scottish visa scheme.
He said: “Before the Brexit referendum, the Brexiteers promised Scotland its own visa system and before the general election Labour figures made this commitment as well.
“Local businesses, higher education institutions and other stakeholders across Scotland are crying out for a specific Scottish system that can meet Scotland’s specific migration and economic needs.
“Whilst I welcome this apparent concession from this Labour MP, we have still got a long way and I hope that Labour will keep to its commitments in a way that the Brexiteers never did.”
Senior Scottish Labour figures have previously cited the Fresh Talent scheme that was launched in 2005 by the Labour UK government to deal with population decline and skill shortages north of the border.
It allowed international students attending Scottish universities to remain working in Scotland for up to two years after their studies, at which point they could apply for other visas.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale, Labour’s last first minister in Scotland, who was in power when the programme was implemented, has previously called for “more regionalisation of immigration policy”.
Ten days before the 2016 EU referendum, Michael Gove, then the justice secretary, said it would be “for Scotland to decide” on immigration numbers to the country after Brexit.
However, in 2020 the Home Office rejected a call from Nicola Sturgeon, then first minister, for Scotland to have its own visa and immigration strategy to deal with the country’s falling birthrate and the impacts of Brexit.
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