UK immigration plans would harm economy, warn biz chiefs

Bloomberg

UK government proposals to make companies list their foreign workers would harm the economy because they are “anti-business and dangerously naive,” more than 100 leaders of small and medium-sized businesses said in a letter to the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
“The ability to hire both British and non-British people has historically helped business grow by bringing in varied skills and perspectives,” the company chiefs wrote in the letter published Monday. Prime Minister Theresa May “cannot claim to be open to trade while demonizing workers from other countries, nor can she claim to be pro‑enterprise when her ministers use such anti-business rhetoric.”
May and Home Secretary Amber Rudd face a growing backlash against the plan, announced at their Conservative Party’s annual conference last week, to make companies detail the proportion of their workers that are foreign-born, in line with practice in the U.S. That’s led Rudd to row back on the policy, saying first that it’s only a proposal as part of a review, and adding in a statement on Sunday that the data wouldn’t be made public.
The government came under further pressure on Monday when Carolyn Fairbairn, director-general of the country’s main business lobby, the CBI, told the Times newspaper that May risks “closing the door” on an open economy with her immigration policies. “The world is watching. International investors are watching,” she said.
MIGRATION TARGET
May has touted Britain’s vote in June to leave the European Union as a mandate to crack down on immigration, an issue that was much cited by voters during the campaign. Rudd last week reiterated a Conservative election campaign pledge to bring net annual migration down to below 100,000 from more than 300,000 currently.
Cobra Beer Ltd. founder Karan Bilimoria, Solarcentury Holdings Ltd. founder Jeremy Leggett and TechHub Chief Executive Officer Elizabeth Varley were among signatories to the letter in the Telegraph.
“Amber Rudd’s plan would hurt the economy, hurt workers’ rights and hurt Britain’s standing as a tolerant country open for business,” they wrote. “As members of the business community, we will not comply with such a policy.”

CHARM OFFENSIVE
Prime Minister Theresa May resumed her foreign outreach after stirring global concern that her government’s focus on immigration controls as it leaves the European Union risks alienating international partners as well as curbing access to the single market. The Conservative Party leader travelled to Denmark and the Netherlands on Monday for talks with prime ministers Lars Lokke Rasmussen and Mark Rutte respectively as she tries to build understanding for her position ahead of this month’s EU summit in Brussels, her first as premier. The visits to two traditional allies within Europe follows trips to other EU capitals including Berlin, Paris and Warsaw as the U.K. prepares to trigger Article 50 by the end of March, beginning up to two years of Brexit negotiations.
The prime minister is under pressure from financial markets, business leaders, government colleagues and a cross-party group of lawmakers after she set out her vision of how Britain will exit the 28-nation bloc. May’s pledge to restrict immigration is increasingly seen by investors and fellow EU governments alike as incompatible with continued U.K. access to the single market, posing a risk to the economy. That realization has sent shock waves through markets and pushed the pound to its biggest weekly loss since the Brexit vote in June. Sterling resumed its decline on Monday, and was down 0.2 percent as of 10:35 a.m. in London.
“The U.K. is really shooting themselves in the foot and it is going to get ugly,” Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at the New York University Stern School of Business, said at an event in Washington on
Sunday.