The £1,000 fee for hiring skilled EU workers that will destroy British jobs

The skilled workers levy imposed on companies hiring outside the EU is already a bad idea. Extending it to cover Europe post Brexit is madness

The NHS relies on skilled foreign workers (Getty)

Just when you thought that Britain couldn’t get any more stupid, immigration minister Robert Goodwill (surely a misnomer that) has suggested that companies could be charged a £1,000 “skills levy” for hiring workers from the continent.

Firms that employ from outside the EU will already face this extra cost from April. Mr Goodwill has, however, told a House of Lords Committee that it could extended to cover the EU after the Brexit process is complete (so not until something like 2050 but we’ll set that aside for now).

Even as it stands, the measure could deprive Britons of good jobs rather than helping them to fill skilled roles.

Companies need to know that they can hire the people with the skills they need. If they can’t get them from the domestic labour market, they need to know that they can import them. If they can’t do that - or if it is made too expensive - they will go elsewhere.

The UK could suffer a net reduction in jobs as a result of the levy because companies that top up with overseas staff still employ a majority of UK workers in their UK operations. If it pushes firms out, the UK will lose those jobs.

The measure is therefore a prime example of the Government cutting off the country’s nose to spite its face. However, the impact should be relatively modest as things stand. Employers can still hire from across an entire continent after all.

If they can no longer do that after Brexit, the chances of them giving up on this country as a bad job will be very much greater.

The levy could very easily end up with the Government poking one of the nation's eyes out as well as cutting that nose off.

This country's skills problem is by no means just the fault of the corporate sector. It is true that companies should invest more in training. But no more so than should the Government, which is primarily at fault for the nation's under skilled workforce, and which has to hire from overseas to ensure certain rather important public services don't fall flat on their faces.

If you want evidence for that, just take a trip down to any A&E in any large city. There you will found doctors and nurses from all over the world. The reason they are desperately needed is the UK Government simply hasn’t trained enough of its own. It is also failing to keep hold of enough of those it does train.

This is not a problem that is limited to the NHS. It affects other parts of the public sector too. If there is any organisation that should be charged a skills levy it is the UK Government.

That, of course, would be self defeating. But no more so than charging the corporate sector.

The CBI, and other business groups, not to mention the TUC, have been banging on about what has become known as “the skills gap” for years now to little discernible effect. Their complaints have been greeted with a tin ear in Westminster and Whitehall.

Now ministers have woken up to the problem they have chosen to tackle it not by working with businesses and unions on a sensible plan that would involve investment, and perhaps incentives, but with a breathtakingly cynical new tax in an attempt to burnish its Britain first credentials.

This tax won’t result in any more skilled British workers. It will simply result in fewer British workers.