Points based system will benefit British businesses says Justice Secretary
The Leave Campaign have announced that a points style system, similar to those used in Australia and Canada, would not only help control net migration in the UK but would also mean that businesses could be in a much stronger position.
Speaking to TheBusinessDesk.com at Gowling WLG in Birmingham, Mr Gove stated that whilst we are in the EU, we cannot decide who enters the UK and therefore cannot decide that we want skilled workers at the front of the queue.
He said: “Successful countries like the US, Canada and Australia have a global approach, and they’re not in the EU or anything similar. If we leave, we would be able to forge new trade deals that will give new opportunities to companies here to take more skilled workers on.
“If the UK were to have a points based system, we would be able to say that the only people who can come here are skilled workers, or those with serious job offers. If we vote to leave, wages will go up and it will have a beneficial effect on working people’s salaries.”
Mr Gove also stated that workers who want to remain in the EU are taking a big gamble. He said: “If we vote to stay in the EU, it’s likely that our taxes will rise, because we have to pay for what’s gone wrong in the economies of Greece, Spain and Italy.
“By staying in the EU, the amount we give, which is currently millions of pounds a week, is only likely to rise.”
The justice secretary also said that he thinks more British businesses are coming round to the idea of leaving the EU and it is becoming more of a debate among workers.
He said: “It’s a debate. In a debate minds are changed, votes change and there are more people in the business community who are moving from remain to leave.”
He continued to state that by leaving the EU, we could do more to help the developing world and the price of food will decrease. He said: “One of the terrible things about the EU is that the only continent with lower economic growth is Antarctica, I think we can do better than the frozen south and we can do this by making ourselves open to the world.
“In the EU, we slap a tariff and extra taxes on food from the third world. By taking down the tariff barriers, we can import more from those countries which will help them to grow but also lowers the price of food here, it’s better for all of our futures.”
Responding to Vote Leave’s points based proposal, Executive Director of Britain Stronger in Europe, Will Straw, said that the system will not work and could result in more immigration.
He said: “Australia have twice as many migrants per head as the UK. Economic experts are agreed that leaving the Single Market would lead to recession, costing jobs and raising prices.
“Vote Leave’s proposal of a points based immigration system will take Britain out of the Single Market, which would wreck our economy”.
