The Scotsman Bulletin Monday May 12 2025 #Immigration
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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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