Alison Stanley, Senior Consultant in our Immigration, Asylum and Nationality team, and fellow patrons of the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA) have written a joint article published by ILPA today. It sets out some practical options for the new Labour Government and explains why re-opening regional mobility with Europe would kickstart economic growth.

“The new Government in the UK is facing many challenges, the economy, state of the national finances and public services being among the most pressing. … The relationship of Brexit with these issues is something of an iceberg, very little has been discussed on the surface of the campaigns but the rupture of the UK’s economic and social relationship with continental Europe has touched everyone’s lives directly or indirectly.

“Nowhere is this more stark than in the area of regional mobility … [which] can reduce the current dependency on immigration from countries far away from Europe where geography alone makes circular economic mobility difficult. … At a time when there are pressing labour shortages in the UK, which have contributed to the shrinkage of the economy, and also recently resulted in rising unemployment, regional mobility may provide some solutions”.

The article goes on to cover youth mobility, frontier workers, self-employment and worker registration schemes – all “options [which] could be pursued by the new Government either in tandem or separately. They would assist in resolving many of the outstanding issues of mobility between the EU and the UK.”

The full article can be read on the ILPA website here.