For decades, the public sector has relied on immigrant workers. Now, it faces collapse - The Telegraph

The HMRC, with its thousands of call handlers and tax specialists, is a good example.

A Freedom of Information request shows that, since the pandemic, the number of foreign nationals employed by the tax authority has tripled; the number of Nigerians alone has increased from 151 to 1,533 in just six years.

HMRC stated their recruitment was done “through fair and open competition”, with the priority on ensuring they have “the right skills and expertise to deliver value-for-money for taxpayers”. Last year, MPs found that, in 2024, nearly 44,000 customers were cut off after being on hold to HMRC for more than an hour, up more than 600 per cent on numbers of just two years earlier.

What the solution would look like

The pattern with all of these roles, from HMRC call handlers to NHS consultants, is the same: desperate short-term solutions to urgent recruitment needs.

However, the longer-term answers – from better wages to increased training – have not been put in place in the meantime, either because the state was too skint or short-sighted, or more likely, a mixture of both.

The result is a public sector with very few answers to the question of what happens when the sticking plaster of immigration is ripped off. In the coming months and years, we will undoubtedly find out – either through dire economic consequences or a return to a policy of lax migration that has helped ministers defer difficult decisions for decades.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate is creeping up, hitting 5.2 per cent in February, the highest since the pandemic. Among young adults, 12.8 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds are not in education, employment or training. Almost 2.8 million adults are out of work due to long-term illness – a figure which has jumped by half a million in just five years.

A fix will need a carrot and a stick approach. Tougher approaches to work and welfare, well beyond the watered-down proposals killed by Labour backbenchers last year. It is glaringly obvious, with growth having flatlined, that adding billions to the welfare bill each year is unaffordable.

The carrot should be affordable skills training, from policing to care work, for those who are willing to give work a go. However, this is unlikely to offer a solution across the board. Training a doctor takes the best part of a decade, nursing: three years. The narrative from all major national parties, bar the Greens, is that immigration must go down.

A Government spokesperson said: “Under this Government, net migration is down nearly 70 per cent. We are ending reliance on overseas labour and promoting jobs for British workers to boost economic growth. We recruit on merit through fair and open competition.

“Our priority remains ensuring we have the right skills and expertise to deliver value for money for the taxpayer.”

But with long-term solutions still years from fruition – if in place at all – the truth is that it will prove impossible to stick to the low levels of migration wanted by many voters while maintaining a public sector utterly addicted to foreign workers.