A TOP technology entrepreneur has urged the UK government to “remove all restrictions” on the inward migration of skilled people to support the country’s tech industry.
Ewan Kirk said the policy on migration should change to allow overseas graduates in science and technology to come to the UK more freely with their families to address skill shortages.
The entrepreneur-in-residence at Cambridge University also advocated that education in the UK should be made less expensive for foreigners who should be also provided with jobs after their studies.
According to the founder of Cantab Capital Partners, the government is “terrified of migration” and its policy on migration is “misguided”.
His comments came against the backdrop of the Conservative government’s dilemma of bringing down the net immigration levels, while also tackling the staff shortages industries across sectors are facing.
Britain unveiled a visa scheme last year easing the barriers to hiring key staff from overseas. But fast-growing new start-ups feel it is of little help because of the requirements that firms have to be VAT-registered for at least 37 months to apply for the scheme.
Kirk told The Times that supporting the tech sector by way of easing immigration rules would not cost the government financially.
What was needed was “some government planning around housing, labs and infrastructure, but it is small beer for the government,” he said.
Britain should leverage its education system to attract skilled people, the chairman of Deeptech Labs in Cambridge said and warned that letting them go after their studies would not help the country.
“We have the ability to attract smart, young mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists to this country … and then all we need to do is give them a job,” he told the newspaper.
“But for some reason, the government is terrified of migration,” Kirk, who previously worked for Goldman Sachs, said.
“It seems a bit stupid to bring all these people into a world-class educational system and then say take all those skills away with you and go home,” he said, adding such a situation was “incredibly counter-productive.”
