THE impact of today’s announcement by the UK Government to implement a points-based immigration system cannot be underestimated. As Britain enters a new phase of life post-Brexit, from December 31 EU-UK free movement will cease, with new criteria required to be met to enable a non-skilled worker to enter our workforce.

Examples being used in the media to highlight the points required include university researchers and PhD students in areas such as in STEM. Highly skilled roles which don’t reflect our workforce at large – where does hospitality sit within it? According to a 2018 report by UK Hospitality, our sector is the third-largest employer in the UK, accounting for 3.7 million jobs through direct employment in 2017 and more than £72bn of gross value added (GVA) to the UK economy.

READ MORE: The sheer hypocrisy of Priti Patel is breathtaking

These roles wouldn’t be considered “highly skilled”, but our colleagues, many of whom are European nationals, want to do this type of work, whilst applications from unemployed people are few and far between. Within the government report they cite “wider investment in technology and automation”. Technology has an enormous role to play within our industry and as yet it remains mostly untapped, but it’s there to support guests and staff, to streamline operations and to increase revenue. It fundamentally underpins what makes businesses such as hotels more efficient. But it’s our hospitality workers and colleagues who drive our economy, provide that “warm welcome” recognised around the world and deliver a reason for visitors to return to the UK time and time again.

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon: Tory immigration plans 'devastating' for Scotland

Brexit has already had negative impacts on our sector, as many of our European colleagues left the UK due to uncertainty and feeling unwelcome. The long-term impact of Brexit on our sector is something we may have to come to terms with. However, it is crucial that we continue to access the right talent and diversity of experience, and the government needs to urgently review its proposed system before its impacts have a catastrophic impact on our sector’s ability to function and continue to deliver that much-needed £72bn of GVA.

Julie Grieve
Founder & CEO, Criton

PATEL’S treatment of our hospitality, care, farming and other sectors are nothing short of misguided and disgraceful.

Population growth in Scotland will also be adversely affected.

Why should the brightest and best come to the UK ? Why should we pay higher salaries to those from elsewhere? Is it not the job of government to provide the appropriate and sufficient training to its own citizens at a high level? This shows that the Tories have failed miserably to do this.

It is obviously the case that the UK Government is planning to deprive other countries of their best-qualified citizens, educated and trained by them. This is morally reprehensible.

Such a policy could be stymied if other nations imposed a charge on such leavers based on a multiple of, say, 10 years’ projected salary. This would be paid in advance by the UK employer before permission to work in the UK is given by the employee’s country. It would provide an income for “poorer” countries who would be losing their prize human resources, but more importantly, perhaps, discourage UK employers from plundering their future.

David Egdoll
via email

THOSE of a certain age will remember the BBC comedy show from the 1980s Not the Nine O’Clock News. Often their sketches included a cast member posing as a news reader reading an amusing news item.

I was reminded of the programme by the appearance of Tory Home Secretary Priti Patel on the midday news yesterday.

Amusing it was not – more like bloody tragic. Here we had the bizarre sight of a second-generation immigrant very effectively pulling up the immigration drawbridge behind her.

Her paternal grandparents were born in Tarapur, Gujarat, before emigrating to Uganda and establishing a shop in Kampala.

In the 1960s her parents immigrated to the UK and settled in Hertfordshire, several years before President Idi Amin came to power and expelled Ugandan Asians in 1972.

Would her new racist policy allow in her parents? I suspect not.

Likewise Sajid Javid, who is one of five sons of Pakistani immigrant parents. Javid’s family were farmers from a village in the Punjab, from where they migrated to the UK in the 1960s. His father worked as a bus driver. His mother did not speak English until she had been in the UK for ten years.

It appears that by January you will now need a PhD to pick fruit in the glens of Angus, look after someone in a care home, or serve food in a restaurant.

Brian Lawson
Paisley

WHILE I cannot share all of Rebecca Long-Bailey’s political views, I do applaud her frankness and honesty about the reasons why the Labour party will not support Scottish independence. Unlike the other leadership contenders, who are repeating the same broken promises of the past, she makes clear her view that Labour will never win power in Westminster without winning seats in Scotland.

How Labour will actually increase on their solitary seat, or recover from the appalling results in England at the last General Election, is difficult to imagine. Meanwhile, the people are suffering because of the party’s failure to mount a credible opposition and win seats in England.

Keir Hardy’s Labour party was founded on the basis of independence for the countries in the UK. Isn’t time that Labour looked carefully at their past and acknowledge that the only way that they will have any influence in Scotland is to support the cause of Scottish self-determination?

Pete Rowberry
Duns