The Scotsman Bulletin Monday May 12 2025 #Immigration

The Scotsman

Transcript

00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's video bulletin for this Monday.

00:04My name's Dale Miller, I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman

00:06and I'm joined by political correspondent Rachel Amory.

00:10Rachel, what we're going to talk about is the front page

00:14of today's Scotsman as well.

00:17Fairly significant announcements, first trailed by the Home Secretary,

00:21Yvette Cooper, yesterday when she revealed that the UK government

00:26would be cracking down on social care work visas.

00:30Effectively, they would be cancelled.

00:33Currently, a number of people across the country, including here in Scotland,

00:39are on these visas in the sector.

00:42They are going to cancel them altogether under the proposals currently in place.

00:48But also separately to that, there's some more detail coming out

00:53in a white paper that has been discussed in a speech by Sir Keir Starmer

00:59this morning.

01:01Rachel, we'll get to that shortly, but a lovely front page picture there.

01:06Kirsty Walk received the Fellowship Award at the BAFTA TV Awards last night,

01:11received the standing ovation.

01:13A lovely shot of her there on the front.

01:14And an exclusive from you, Rachel, as well.

01:16And actually, we will touch on that, which is about smear tests for women

01:21and some concerning figures.

01:23But firstly, on immigration, so we haven't seen all the detail

01:28from the white paper yet.

01:29But outside of just the cancellation of social care work visas

01:33for, I guess, what's classed as low-skilled workers,

01:37there's other details that we know already.

01:39Can you talk us through?

01:40Yeah, so Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has already made his speech

01:44setting out what he is calling a significant overhaul

01:47to fix the broken immigration system, as he has put it.

01:51He referred back to previous Conservative governments

01:53saying that not enough was done to tackle immigration.

01:56And if you look at the figures, you do actually see net migration rising

01:59pretty much every year from about the millennium to about 2023,

02:05when it hit about one million people.

02:07So that's what they're trying to bring down.

02:10Now, there's lots of arguments as to the motive for that.

02:12And as a lot of people say, it's a sort of reaction

02:15to other parties' successes.

02:19That's something that Sir Keir Starmer has denied.

02:21But they set out sort of briefly what he is looking at.

02:25So I think some of the biggest changes...

02:27So let's look at the skilled workers' visas.

02:29Let's start off with that one.

02:30They're going to sort of raise the standards for that.

02:33So you're going to have to have a university degree

02:35before you can apply for a skilled workers' visa.

02:38There's going to be increased English language requirements as well.

02:41And that's going to apply to dependents as well.

02:44Now, that will have quite a big impact.

02:46A lot of the people who are on skilled workers' visas,

02:49they're actually dependents of the skilled workers

02:51who perhaps don't have as good language skills.

02:54So that will have a big impact on them as well.

02:57Plenty of other things as well.

02:58Citizenship is another one.

03:00So at the moment, if you want to apply for settled citizenship in Scotland,

03:03or in the UK, you have to do it five years,

03:06that's now going to be extended to 10 years.

03:08At the moment, we don't know if that applies to people

03:10who are already here, have already started the process or not.

03:12We're still waiting to find out the details on that.

03:14But that's the main sort of headlines

03:17to come out of the speech this morning.

03:18And, Rachel, the immediate reaction in and around the announcements,

03:25firstly, from the social care sector,

03:28pretty obvious where the reaction's coming

03:31that they're unhappy about some of these changes.

03:34Yes, I think one of the biggest sort of upsets,

03:37if you want to see, is care worker visas.

03:39It would be ending that completely.

03:41Now, they argue that there's been tens of thousands

03:44who have come on cared workers' visas

03:46and have had their sponsorship cancelled.

03:48So, they are now in the UK without a care job.

03:51Now, the argument is that employers should be

03:53recruiting from that pool of people

03:55rather than looking to bring more people from overseas.

03:59However, there's been highly criticised,

04:01the Royal College of Nursing, for example,

04:03has been one of the ones who's called it out and said,

04:07I mean, there's no sort of plan of growing a domestic workforce

04:11for the care sector, which is so reliant on overseas workers.

04:14The SNP have condemned it as well.

04:19First Minister John Swinney said it was absolute folly,

04:21which is what we've laid on today's front page with.

04:24And the Deputy First Minister was also speaking this morning

04:26where she was highlighting difficulties

04:28in the social care sector and recruitment,

04:31and particularly emphasising on the Highlands and Islands,

04:33of course, where she is at MSP4.

04:36So, she was particularly concerned about how it's going to impact

04:39on sort of the remote areas of the Highlands as well.

04:41So, particularly concerning comments coming out

04:44in reaction to the care worker visa.

04:47Rachel, it's interesting because the picture here in Scotland

04:50is maybe a bit different to the rest of the UK.

04:52We know based on census figures that, you know,

04:55population effectively hasn't been rising

04:58and the only thing that has kept it relatively stable

05:02has been those coming into the country.

05:05There is some concerns around that.

05:08And the Scottish Government, well, the SNP recently took proposals

05:12to the UK Labor Government to see if they could create

05:16a new Scottish worker visa, which sort of goes contrary

05:20to what is being announced here.

05:22I just want to get your thoughts, though.

05:25How much of this is because of reform?

05:27I mean, we probably didn't hear that there was going to be

05:31a new package of announcements coming until the past 48 hours.

05:35Do you think this is just the direct reaction

05:37to what's happening at an election level,

05:40particularly with the local elections the other week?

05:43Yeah, this was something John's doing,

05:44he's sort of brought up saying that he's been putting forward

05:47these proposals to the UK Government

05:48and as far as he can see, they've all been thrown out,

05:51like this option of a Scottish visa, for example.

05:54The timing does raise questions about how much

05:57this has to do with reform.

05:59This can be brought in or mentioned at any point

06:01in the last few months since the Labour Party

06:04came to power in Westminster.

06:06And yet they've chosen a fortnight after reform

06:08very heavily defeated them in the English local council elections.

06:13Reform are doing very, very well

06:14on the polls, including here in Scotland.

06:16And one of the biggest sort of commitments

06:19of the reform party is to bring down immigration.

06:23They're very open that they are anti-immigration at the moment.

06:26So it does feel like it is reactionary to it.

06:30The Royal College of Nursing, for example,

06:31they have also said this is clearly a reaction

06:35to the rise of reform.

06:37But there was a point in the speech

06:39where Sir Keir Starmer did say

06:40this is not to do with anything else.

06:41This is my politics.

06:42This is what I'm wanting to do.

06:44It is not in reaction to other political parties.

06:47It does feel very strangely timed if that is the case.

06:51So it feels very deliberate in reaction

06:53to reformist popularity in the local English elections.

06:56And Rachel, just a separate story I referred to there

06:59at the top, smear tests, you did put in some FOIs.

07:06There were some interesting figures that came back.

07:10And it is concerning.

07:11There is a drop off in the number of these tests

07:13that were taken last year.

07:15Yes.

07:15It's only just in the past three years

07:17that we're seeing this sort of trend

07:18where the numbers pretty much all over Scotland

07:21have reduced quite significantly.

07:23So while there's always this push

07:27to have more people going for a cervical smear test,

07:29it seems that less and less people each year

07:31are actually receiving those tests.

07:34And so there's also some quotes in the story

07:35from Annie Wells, who's a Conservative MSP,

07:38basically saying that the government needs to do better.

07:41It's a huge part of the Women's Health Plan

07:43and improving health outcomes.

07:46So yes, some interesting figures in that story there,

07:49which you can also read in today's paper.

07:50You can read all about the stories

07:54that we've discussed at scotsman.com

07:56if you want to know a bit more

07:57about those immigration changes.

07:59And we will cover more reaction

08:00from some of the affected industries throughout today.

08:04You can find the latest coverage

08:07from our politics team

08:08via the politics tab in the navigation bar.

08:12Please go out and buy a copy of the paper tomorrow as well.

08:15We'll have all the latest on assisted dying

08:18ahead of what is an historic vote

08:21taking place at Holyrood tomorrow.

08:23Rachel, thanks to you

08:24and thanks to everyone else for joining us.

08:26Bye-bye.

08:27We'll see you next time.

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