Experts warn migration rules may fuel IT offshoring

Proposed changes to the UK's immigration system could lead to more IT jobs being offshored, industry experts have warned.

Despite a well-documented domestic IT skills shortage - and projections of increasing demand for techies and telecoms workers over the coming years - IT staff have not been included on a draft list of 'shortages occupations' drawn up by the Home Office's Migration Advisory Committee (MAC).

Science and maths teachers, civil engineers and even ballet dancers do make the grade but IT workers are not considered to be in short supply in the UK, according to the MAC's report.

The new system, modelled on a similar scheme in Australia, will be points based, with shortage-list workers needing fewer points to be allowed to work in the UK.

A Home Office spokesman told ZDNet.co.uk's sister site, silicon.com: "The MAC's data analysis showed that IT workers were not necessarily in shortage here. They also took evidence from the sector advisory panel… and they advised that IT professions weren't included."

He added: "The MAC… has a pretty robust methodology. The first of its sort. And this is what it concluded."

In its report, the MAC said it heard evidence on the following IT jobs: information and communication technology managers; IT strategy and planning professionals; and software professionals, but it did not find "strong evidence of shortages" in any of the roles.

But Paul Smith, global managing director of outsourcing at recruitment company Harvey Nash, told silicon.com the MAC's conclusion there is no UK IT skills shortage is "laughable".

He said: "It's a bit like the government moving everybody off the roads with the carbon and congestion charging policy and taxes and moving them onto the trains without having a public transport system. The same thing's happening in IT where we currently have a massive skills shortage in IT - and it is massive, there's 160,000 jobs unfilled in the IT space right now - and they're saying we don't have a shortage."

Smith added: "If [chief information officers] can't find the skills in the UK, they clearly have to look to see if they can bring people in from outside of the UK to backfill their skills. If suddenly they're not able to do that because it's not a government priority then what are they going to do? The answer is they're going to go and develop elsewhere.

"They're going to move their central IT department out of the UK to other locations. They're going to start moving their IT resources offshore. Many of them are doing that at the moment but this will just compound the challenge."

Matthew Poyiadgi, IT trade association CompTIA's European VP, added that barriers to skilled techies working in the UK could reduce the competitiveness of UK Plc.

He warned: "Reducing the number of talented people coming into the UK also reduces competition for jobs. Reduced competition will quickly result in an employer's market where businesses no longer need to fight for the best people. The pressure to offer competitive wages will drop and the UK will become a less attractive proposition for all strong IT candidates, be they from the UK, the EU or further afield.

"Long term this can only result in one effect: the gradual movement of all IT talent from the UK to countries that offer better salaries and better employment opportunities. The bottom line is that we need to remain an open market for talented technology candidates or we risk eroding the growing pool of skilled individuals we already have."

Harvey Nash's Smith added: "There's still time for them to reconsider this. This [MAC] report needs to come back on itself and actually take some real input from the IT industry about the real challenges in the recruitment industry… and what the implications are of their actions. Things are much more far reaching for the economy… than they have possibly realised in their machinations."

However, Marilyn Davidson, a director at Association of Technology Staffing Companies (ATSCo), does not believe the MAC's omission of IT will have a big impact on how many migrant tech workers come to the UK.

She said: "I don't think it'll have a big impact. We haven't had any IT workers on the shortage of occupations list for years… so I don't think it's really going to make a great deal of difference.

"The main area where IT workers come in from non-EU countries is from India and most of those come in on intracompany transfers and that's not affected, so I still think we're going to get quite an influx of people from India coming in on intracompany transfers."

For skills not on the shortage occupations list, the MAC report recommends sectors should "develop training strategies and look beyond migration for new recruits". However growing IT skills at home may prove challenging in the face of declining numbers of science and IT students, according to Harvey Nash's Smith. "Government and education have become so arts based that we are just not encouraging our children into the science subjects," he said.

UK IT sector skills body, e-skills UK, declined to comment for this article.