 Good morning, and welcome to the 11th meeting of the committee in 2019. I'd like to remind members and the public to turn off their mobile phones, and any members using electronic devices to access committee papers should ensure that they're turned to silence. We've received apologies today from Jamie Greene MSP. Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking business in private. Does the committee agree to take item 3, which is consideration of correspondence concerning inter-institutional relations post-Brexit? The second item of business on the agenda today is an evidence session on the committee's immigration inquiry. I welcome to the meeting members of the Scottish Government's expert advisory panel on migration and population. We have Professor Christina Boswell, the chair of the expert advisory group, as well as Professor David Bell and Professor Rebecca Kay. Thank you all for attending this morning. The purpose of today's session is to take evidence from your group, which the Minister for Migration commissioned to consider recommendations from the MACS report on EEA migration and the UK Government's proposal for a new immigration system after Brexit. You were specifically tasked to consider the potential impact of the proposals on Scotland. I understand that the impact of the proposal is to reduce migration between 30 per cent and 50 per cent. I wonder whether you were able to summarise what your expert advisory group found that impact would be over time on Scotland? If I may, before we start, I will give a brief statement about the capacity in which we are giving evidence today. As you know, we are members of the expert advisory group, which was set up to provide advice and analysis to the Scottish Government on migration and population. First, I want to note that we are an interdisciplinary grouping. Today, we represent part of the spectrum of expertise in that group, but we could not be joined by all colleagues. However, it is important to note our interdisciplinary nature, because our analysis does not just cover labour market or fiscal aspects, as the Migration Advisory Committee does, but we also look at demographic social effects of migration on communities, and we look at the effects on different types of areas within Scotland. As you know, our first commission, as you noted, looked at the effects of the white paper proposals on areas of devolved competence in Scotland. Because immigration policy is a reserved competence, we were not tasked with developing policy recommendations, so I think that this is an important thing to note. For that reason, in our comments to the committee, as EAG members, we will confine our comments to those who respect that remit. As EAG members, we will not be discussing particular recommendations in relation to immigration policy, but as individual experts, we have in the past analysed and commented on those issues in relation to different recommendations. If we stray into that terrain, we will simply clarify that we are speaking in our capacity as individual experts, rather than EAG members. If we could note that, that would be appreciated. Can I repeat my opening question? You can answer it in that context. The projected reduction in migration is between 30 and 50 per cent over the coming two decades. Maybe you could start by perhaps giving us an indication of what you think the impact of that would be, for example, for the provision of public finances, the effect on public finances. First of all, in relation to that projection, I should introduce the normal caveat that such projections are always very crude and extremely difficult to derive, given the uncertainties around the many factors influencing future migration flows. Based partly on the analysis of the distribution of salaries of those who would meet the proposed tier 2 threshold and on analysis of recent trends of EU and non-EU migration, we developed the two scenarios of potential effects of the white paper proposals on migration. One of them respected the analysis of the white paper, assuming an 80 per cent reduction. The other one was based on our own analysis and assumed a 70 per cent reduction of EU inflows for work, but also then factored in migration of dependents and family reunion, student migration and assumed an outflow rate of 50 per cent. Based on that, we projected that there would be a 50 per cent reduction of EU net migration, which would imply an overall 30 per cent reduction of overseas migration to Scotland. It is very important to note that we tried to stress in the report that these aggregate figures effectively mask the differential impacts of that reduction on, first of all, different sectors of the economy, secondly, different areas, so local areas, council areas of Scotland and also differentiated effects by gender. I think that this was the key message of our report that we should not just look at overall net migration figures, but how that would differentially affect in terms of geography, sector and gender. One of the key things that we discussed was how, in a sense, ending free movement and channeling most migration for work through tier two, which is for skilled migration, would disproportionately affect a number of sectors, which are typically lower salary and which are dependent on overseas migration. Sectors such as textiles, social care, leisure and travel, sales and elementary occupations would be especially detrimentally affected. David Bell will be able to elaborate on some of the effects on sectors. We also analysed geographically how different areas might be affected. The analysis of distribution of salaries and the prevalence of certain sectors in different local areas suggest that certain areas, in particular remote and rural areas but also other areas facing depopulation and, with a preponderance of lower salary jobs, would be especially negatively affected in terms of a substantial reduction or perhaps even an impossibility of securing immigration through tier two. That summarises some of the sectoral and regional impacts. I think that note is the potential gender impact. If we analyse salary distribution by gender, we find that far fewer female migrants or far fewer occupations in areas that are typically employing females would have a disproportionate impact on potential female migration to Scotland. I will hand over to David. It could mean that I know that other members want to drill down on the sector, so I am going to leave that to them. However, I am particularly interested in the overall impact of those changes both on public finances and the provision of public services. The overall reduction in labour supply is going to have an adverse effect on output. The Scottish Government has done quite a lot of work at the kind of macro level that we did not seek to reproduce here. I cannot remember exactly when the report came out, but the Scottish Government's report does indicate the overall effect on the economy. In terms of the public finances, we did do a little bit more nuanced work at the individual level. There are a number of things that it is important to take into account. First of all, salaries for EU migrants in Scotland are somewhat less than they are for EU migrants in the rest of the UK on average. What that means is that they will be contributing less in terms of taxes than EU migrants south of the border. In terms of their use of public services, what we have is typically relatively young people who are not going to make a very significant use of health resources, social care resources and limited use of the benefits system, largely because, as our report shows, a very high proportion of them are working. What they will perhaps use more of is education resources—education for their children. That is common with the rest of the UK, so there is not that much difference. In a sense, we go to the calculations that have been done for the UK as a whole. At the individual level of the UK as a whole, EU migrants are net contributors to the public finances rather than net users of public finance. We think that the margin, the surplus that EU migrants in Scotland will generate is somewhat slightly less because of their slightly lower wages, but we think that that is not sufficient to offset their overall positive contribution to the public finances. In the long term, if you think about them not as a single snapshot in a particular year but think of their contribution to the public finances over their lifetime, well, if they stay in Scotland, they will make more use of health resources as they age, they will make more use of social care resources as they age, but what, in effect, you are getting are people who are coming into the Scottish labour market already educated, so that part of the public finances has been met by other countries, to be honest, so their overall use, lifetime use of public services is that much less than those of Scottish residents or natives. Did Professor Key want to come in at all? I do not think that that was especially my area, except perhaps to pick up on, you were asking also about public services and just to come back to the point about things being differentiated across Scotland, so we know that in some of the more rural and remote rural places, a small change in the numbers of people coming in to, for example, keeping a local hospital open or keeping local schools open can make an enormous difference locally, and that that can have further repercussions not only for migrants in the area but for locally-born people. I was going to talk about that. First of all, the difference in salary, for example, East Renfisher, 49.5 per cent of EU citizens meet the £30,000 threshold if the UK was to go ahead with that, which it seems is out to consultation on at the moment, whereas only 16 per cent in the Western Isles. You say in page 10 of your report that, for remote rural areas in Isles, attracting working-age migrants is the only realistic option to a downward demographic spiral driven by the age structure legacy of selective outmigration in the last decades of the 20th century, and you call it a demographic double whammy, a little to farage and implications for economic activity, provision of services and levels of general wellbeing. Does that mean that that could affect the long-term sustainability of communities per se? Some communities might not actually be able to still be here in 10 or 20 years, I want to tell you an alarmist, but if that is implemented, what are your fears on that and what is the prognosis? That is precisely what it means. There are areas where not only the only current contributor to natural population growth but the only possible contributor to local population growth is in migration of people of reproductive age, put it bluntly, so the local population is so damaged by outmigration. The ageing structure of that population is such that it is not possible for the birthrate to exceed the death rate in those areas. Yes, if I can convener, just two days ago I met the Arn Development Trust to present figures to Scottish ministers that we had meetings with who said that they believed that the working-age population would shrink in Arn in my constituency by 47 per cent in the next six years alone because there are so many older people and people in their ffifties who are retiring, and I have great fears that we are already having difficulty delivering, for example, care packages for older people on the island and sustaining just a lot of everyday services at the island community. I mean, Tavish will know more about that probably than anyone else here. It is a real concern for me in Mackinstance and I can imagine what it must be like for the Western Isles facing that prospect. Some work that COSLA did a couple of years ago showed that local authorities, I think that it was about 50 per cent of local authorities across Scotland put population as their first priority outcome indicator. It is not just a marginal issue for outer isles or particular concern. Obviously, it is different in different local areas, but it is significant for significant numbers of Scottish local areas. It is true, too, however, that migration on its own will not solve that problem. I think that it is important to bear that in mind, but nevertheless it will contribute to the solution. It is not the full story. I think that we should also point out that EU migration has been distinct from previous waves of migration to the UK and Scotland in the sense that it has been much more evenly distributed across all types of areas. Whereas previous immigration flows were typically clustered around urban areas cities, EU migration has been much more beneficial than previous flows of migration in terms of its geographical spread. That is not to exaggerate its impact. If you look at the data that our colleague Andrew Copas analysed regarding the distribution of in-migration, overseas migration and the rest of UK migration to different types of areas of Scotland, of course the urban areas and the mixed areas see a higher proportion per capita of inflows. We do not want to suggest that there has been a huge surge of migration to those areas, but very small numbers to particular local areas can make a significant difference. The areas have lower birth rates as well, so a lot of natural increases of the indigenous population, so that is why you have that double whammy. You have a lower birth rate for the indigenous population and a higher age structure in fewer. You have also got the potential for public services to be damaged by tighter immigration controls and that to stimulate flight from those areas of locally-born people because the hospital closes or because the school closes, so that is part of what we meant around the double whammy. If I can just come back on the question about it not being the full answer, and maybe here I stray a little bit out of the EAG remit and into my own research, which has very much been on migrants' experiences of living also in rural and more remote places, I think that absolutely there are questions there about the conditions in which people live and the softer levers that the Scottish Government has control over to think about what would retain migrants as well as locally-born people in those places. There are big questions there about whether migration is a long-term answer because migrants also aspire for their children, for example, to leave. Clare Baker followed by Alexander Stewart. I was interested in those final points because not to go over the recent argument, but the document says that it is the only realistic option. Professor Kay is also an expert in this area. I think that the points made around how we secure a population there are important. Migration is not the only answer in those circumstances. I was interested in predicting the future trends and the work that the group has done. The group said that there were three main factors, the change in socioeconomic conditions in EU countries, the conditions in the UK, and the UK migration policy. It seems that the trend has largely been based on the immigration policy. Conversations have had around European issues. We know that countries such as Poland and Romania where there have been a lot of migrants come over to the UK are facing their own demographic challenges. In some of the context, there is an opportunity for them to take people back and help to grow their own economies. At the same time, why did the group focus more on immigration than on the other issues? Our remit for the commission was specifically to analyse the impacts of the proposals in the white paper on migration to Scotland. We were not tasked with looking at the potential impacts of Brexit more broadly or changing demographic trends or political trends across EU countries. We are very clear that those projections are premised on that narrow set of variables. We are holding constant the other variables. However, of course, we would agree with you that we cannot hold those other variables constant in the real world. Even if you look at the ONS quarterly net migration statistics from February, you see a substantial decrease in EU in migration and an increase in out migration, but especially the EU eight countries. There is a really quite dramatic decrease in immigration and increase in out migration. In some senses, and now I am perhaps going beyond the EAG remit, we can see that this is a natural progression of trends in migration from a particular place of origin to a particular destination. Research on migration suggests that it is typical that you get these waves, what is often called a migration hump, where a particular sending area has a surplus of working age population, young people who are looking for better opportunities and that they will migrate to certain destinations, but that might have a cumulative effect initially over the first few years so that you get a quite substantial rise in migration. However, that will tend to tail off over time as, first of all, that supply of potential migrants is reduced, as perhaps conditions between the origin and destination place converge. Also, in the case of central East European countries, we are seeing particular demographic trends ageing population. Arguably, it would be the case that we would have seen that tailing off in any case, even without Brexit and its impacts. I think that most people would agree that Brexit has perhaps perpetuated or accelerated that effect in terms of the quite radical decrease in migration from central East European countries. Of course, we could do another set of projections where we might have speculated a bit more on potential future economic, demographic and political conditions in sending countries. I think that we might have slightly different projections, but we did stick quite narrowly to our remit. As a link to that question is how the baseline has decided over the five-year period, and you will be aware of the recent birthrate figures for Scotland that are starting to show a decrease, which is the first decrease that we have seen in recent years. We have our own challenges before we even add in the different migration policy. Did you be able to take that into consideration? One thing that I should note about our baseline is that it differs from the NRS baseline, which is based on an average of the last 25 years. If you look at average net migration in Scotland over the last 25 years, you are looking before the substantial increase of net migration in the mid-2000s. We decided that we would base it on more recent trends for a number of reasons that I will not go into now. We have different, perhaps a more optimistic baseline than the NRS. In terms of that specific question about birthrates, I think that, David, you want to… Yes, that is true. Of course, it is also true that the birthrate has declined, but life expectancy has declined in the last couple of years. For the kind of time horizon that we were looking at, the effect of lower birthrate is only going to have an effect on the working-age population right towards the end of that period of time. The reduction in life expectancy may have implications for health spending and for social care spending. At the moment, we have only got a couple of years' data on that. By and large, the changes in the broad assumptions have not been made that would have a very significant effect on the relationship between the working-age population and the 65 and above population, who are the ones who are very expensive in terms of the public finances. Just to move on briefly. You have set out the remit that you are working to and appreciate the caution and express in views on how we go forward, but the document does lay out the impact of the 30,000 suggested threshold and how a 25 or 27 different impacts that would have. Can you say a bit about whether a group supports an income threshold in principle and how the income threshold works for people who are already coming through from a non-EU situation, who are using tier 2? Do you have any views on how that operates? On that, I will leave the specific labour market question to David. I do not think that it is our place to comment on whether we think that there should be a threshold. I think that one can infer from the analysis and the report that we think that free movement has been very beneficial to Scotland, but I will not go beyond that. You are going to have to accept that you are going to have some kind of filter if you are not going to have free movement across the board. What is a good and efficient way to design that kind of filter? Clearly, the way in which the MAC has decided to go is a long limit in relation to tier 2, but what we do in the report is to pull out the implications of that in relation to a number of different characteristics. Those are spatial, those are related to gender and those are by occupation. Let me take social care as an example. It is going to make an industry that is already in some difficulty because social care workers are almost certainly paid at a wage that is less than their value to society. I go through the implications of that. It might be along the lines of how, because virtually none of them will qualify under the threshold, that it might result in more delayed discharge from hospitals, it might cause more carers, predominantly women, to leave the labour market if there are not sufficient social care workers. Now, the UK Government may seek social care workers elsewhere, but they will still struggle with this tier 2 limit because, basically, it is an industry where there is not the sort of career structure that you have, for example, in nursing, and even at the top, a care worker is unlikely to earn £30,000. I know that you do not want to be able to express views on future proposals, but from your knowledge of how systems operate, could you have variations if you were to operate at a threshold, either between countries or regions, or would it have to more be by sector, or is there a possibility to develop policy in this way? I think that there are a range of options, and those have been set out in previous documents. There is a document, for example, which I authored with Sarah Kianby and Saskia Smelly, which sets out options for a differentiated approach. I know that Eve Hepburn, who is sitting over there, has also written on this for this committee. Of course, you can, first of all, use the Scottish shortage occupation list. You could vary salary and or skills thresholds for particular regions of the UK, and also for particular occupations. I think that one of the things that one might infer from this report, but this would be beyond the remit of this report and the EEAG, would be to think about differentiation by subarea within Scotland. I think that one of the problems with relying on sectoral or occupational shortage approaches is that you would not necessarily channel the right level of migration to rural and remote areas, for example. For example, if you had particular provisions for, say, chefs or others within the tourism or hospitality sectors, you might get a tendency to concentrate on or people channeling to urban areas where, perhaps, conditions might be seen as more attractive or might be a more obvious destination. What one might consider is looking at, say, council areas as subnational units, which might have particular provisions. Areas, for example, facing challenges of depopulation might be subject to either specific occupation shortage approach or a lower salary threshold, for example. There are a range of possible options for differentiation that could address those problems within a single immigration system. The white paper called on us to consider the greater consensus in immigration policy, but there has also been talk about the enhanced rule of the migration committee. How would you see that enhanced rule going forward with the process of the UK immigration policy? So, if I might just make a general comment, and I think David Maywell has something to say about that, I mean, I think one of the issues is, and I think this is partly why we were set up as an interdisciplinary group, is that I think it reflects a desire to frame immigration and the impacts of immigration in a broader way, taking into account both demographic factors, a broader range of social effects of immigration, and also looking at the differential effects on different types of local area. I think that what would be very welcome is that, if we saw the MAC perhaps broadening to take into account those different perspectives, I am not sure that we envisaged that happening. I think that it has been very much focused on labour market analysis and fiscal analysis. I do not know, David. I think that Christine Maywell is alluding to the fact that, like me, all the members of the MAC are economists, so the focus has been very much on labour market effects and whether changes to migration policy will have a positive or negative effect on native-born workers. That is one major area, whether there will be an effect on investment, whether there will be an effect on technological change. The fiscal impact, which I have already mentioned, has also been a particular focus. From the MAC committee, given its composition, it is not surprising in a way that its focus has been almost entirely economic. The focus that it has had has been some calls that maybe it is not fit for purpose in its process, because it is not looking at it and not expanding it and not giving it that. I do not think that we would endorse that view. We have immense respect for the work of Alan Manning and the very rigorous analysis. As far as the MAC has carried out analysis, it has been very rigorous in terms of the impacts of immigration, for example. It is a very positive and welcome contribution to the debate. It has certainly silenced a number of arguments around issues like whether migrants are a net drain on the UK economy, which is clearly not the case. What dialogue and discussion have you had with the MAC going forward? Has there been a good, bad or indifferent process on that? It was not part of our remit to engage in formal dialogue with the MAC. We had quite a short timeframe to prepare the report. It was commissioned at the end of October and we reported it at the end of February. Obviously, we have informal contact with the MAC, but that was not part of our remit. Thank you very much, Annabelle Ewing. Thank you, convener. Good morning. Professor Manning gave evidence to the committee some time ago that he conceded that there had been no specific financial modelling vis-à-vis Scotland. Now, there is some reference in a letter from the Home Secretary to the committee to the fact that in the MAC's interim update, prior to publication of the final report, they specifically considered the position of Scotland, it is not clear what that actually means. Does anybody know what that means? Did they then go back and do rigorous financial modelling in Scotland, or did they just do something else? Not to try and know of. Within the time, as Christina MacDonald has said, we did not have sufficient time to do the rigorous financial modelling. What we have done is to look at how Scotland compares to the modelling that they had done for the UK as a whole. There is nothing in the public domain that I know of that is at the same level of detail in relation to the effects of migration on the public finances and so on, in the same level of detail as was done for the UK as a whole. We have done some very tentative steps, such as pointing out that, unlike other parts of the UK, Scotland bears fiscal risk if there is a change in migration brought about by a change at the UK level. I mean that, because Scotland is now responsible for much of its own tax revenue, if there is a downturn in migration among people who, for example, pay income tax, so they are earning more than 10,000 or thereabouts, it is going to impact on Scotland's revenues, although in a complicated way that Kenneth Gibson will understand that has an effect coming back through the block grant adjustment. It is very difficult modelling to do, but nevertheless, in relation to other parts of the UK, Scotland is more exposed to a fiscal risk in relation to changes in migration patterns. May I also add that there was an analysis in an annex of the White Paper, which was published in December, which did talk about the fiscal impacts of the projected 80% reduction in EU migration for the purpose of work. The results were really quite dramatic, and partly for that reason we felt that that argument had already been made and that insofar as it would more or less apply to Scotland as well, that that was already out there in the public domain and had quite severe impacts. I move along in a similar vein. We find our session with Professor Manning to be very interesting and alarming, because there seems to be a assumption that a UK immigration policy should not focus on what he said had previously been the position on favouring lower-wage lower-skilled sectors. We then went on to have an interesting discussion about the potential impacts of such an approach for key sectors of the Scottish economy, including tourism and agriculture. The UK Home Secretary replied to the committee convener in a letter 15 February of this year, he said, and I quote the committee, so Mac, that it is clear that sectors of the economy that normally employ lower-skilled migrants, such as tourism, hospitality and agriculture, should compete on wages and work conditions in order to make their sectors attractive to workers. I wonder what you feel that that would mean in the Scottish context. If the economy is suddenly short in terms of the supply of a particular kind of labour, in other words, EU migrants, how would it react in a market sense to that? One response might be to increase the wage that is being offered and attract native born people. The effect of that is to increase costs, which then increases prices. The question is, are you any longer competitive? Another market-based approach might be to say, well, let's substitute capital for labour in this sector and increase investment. You have to think, well, entrepreneurs and producers are making the decisions that they are making because they see that as the best way to produce whatever their enterprise is designed to produce. Let me give you an example of that. Thinking about agriculture, you might say, well, no longer have you got cheap EU migrants coming in, you offer higher wages to get native born people, and if that doesn't work, which probably won't, partly because of the limit and the areas where that industry is strong are not areas where there are lots of young people that might do those kinds of jobs. You might say, well, if you can't do that, get a machine that will pick your soft fruit. Some of those have not yet been invented, so that is an issue. Then you might say, well, let's get out of soft fruit altogether, for example, and use the land for some other kind of product, like the area that I live in, Perth and Kinross. It would be potatoes, probably. However, you are into a different market, the potato market, which is not as profitable as the soft fruit sector. Farmers are left with a very difficult set of choices in those circumstances. It is all very well to say, well, you should do something else, or you should pay more for your workers, but that has implications for economic output and therefore for the incomes of the farmers and therefore for the community as a whole. I think, in general, that we wouldn't want to rule out that in certain sectors there might be some benefits from reducing the pool of low-skilled, low-salaried labour, but that one would have to do a sector-by-sector analysis to really work out what the options are for substituting to either other products or investing in capital and so on. I think that we are lacking that analysis at the moment and that one shouldn't assume that there is a blanket solution and set of responses to that intervention, as is the case, I think, with the MAC analysis. I think there was a study done towards the end of last year by the Scottish Rural College commissioned by the Scottish Government that looked specifically at agriculture and I don't remember the exact percentages, but showed very high percentages of farmers saying that they would switch to non-agricultural production in the case of not having the availability of labour. Obviously that has repercussions for local communities, for environmental policies, for all sorts of other aspects of Scottish policy. Indeed, it has repercussions for the food supply. It just seems that the comment was made that the MAC focus had been entirely economic, but I would argue that whether economics, therefore, if you imperil your food supply, you endanger the environment, you affect the sustainability of communities right across Scotland. What is the point of being a purist economist—sorry, I don't mean to be at all disrespectful to the three of you—in a very broad thrust of a conversation? What is the point of purist economist—well, I am not a purist lawyer. I am sort of a middle-of-the-road lawyer, but what would be the point when you see great sways of disruption? Surely economic modelling is supposed to help and foster economic growth. I don't know. I am a lawyer, as I have just written about, an economist, purist or other. Responding from that perspective, I absolutely wouldn't want to be sucked into a conversation about the fitness for purpose or not of the MAC, but I think there is an issue with any kind of approach that doesn't look at the broader repercussions of whether my problem as a sociologist is that I just look too much at what people tell me and what their experiences are, and I can miss the bigger picture, for example, about fiscal effects, and I think that the strength of our group is trying to bring those things together. I absolutely think that perhaps not so much for us, but for people in parliaments, there is a reason to look at these broader repercussions and to try and think how they join up. Yes, we can talk about mechanisation, but how will that work for social care? If social care in Scotland is largely purchased by local authorities, where is the room to shift the economic modelling for that and to raise the salaries, there might be very good reasons. David already said that it is paid below its social value, and I certainly wouldn't want to argue for a model that says that migrants will accept low wages, so that's fine. We just continue to provide low social care below its value, but there is a much bigger set of issues that need to be taken into consideration with that. If I can just make a last point too, and it relates to what Christina Just said, we tend to think of that through the perspective of the short-term, and we think about the adjustments that have to be made in the short-term. It's probably true that the MAC has been taking a kind of long-term perspective, because investment or change of the type of production that you are doing is really a medium to long-term venture. Therefore, in a sense, there is bound to be short-term disruption. It seems to me whether there can be long-term success out of that is an open question, but when you restrict labour supply, the economic sensor is bound to have a negative effect on growth and incomes. I also read all your comments, particularly Professor Case's comments, that we shouldn't just accept as a matter of principle low wages below social value. I don't, but nonetheless I'm a pragmatist. We are where we are at the moment and we need to get to other places, but we can't do that overnight, nor can those individual sectors, particularly archicultural tourism. One last question, convener, on picking up the seasonal workers pilot. Where does that currently stand and numbers? Where are we in terms of the modelling that you perhaps did and the likely impact of that in seasonal agricultural workers? I don't know which one. Professor Bell, that may be the first. My understanding is that it is 2,500 people across the UK as a whole. Scotland has about 14 per cent of the seasonal workers, so it has well in excess of its population share of the seasonal workers. However, if it got 14.6 per cent of 2,500, I see soft fruit farms in Round Blair Gallery that two or three of them would absorb all of those. It's a pilot, and I think it's not meant to be the whole solution. We'll see how it develops, and it's non-EU migrants, so we'll see how it develops, but it would have to be expanded very considerably. If those agriculture-related industries that need seasonal workers are to be maintained, it's got to be said that those are the parts of agriculture in Scotland that have been growing fastest in recent years. Would Professor Bell be able to put a figure on what we would need to see numbers, why? Have you been able to make any assessment of that? We can look at the saws when it was in existence. The saws admitted had a cap of 21,250 until it was discontinued in 2016, so I would assume at least that level, but you can see the difference between that and the 2,500. We should emphasise that it's a pilot scheme, and I think that another thing that we haven't yet mentioned, when we're talking about adjustment from quote dependence on lower wage models and so on, we have to take into account that there is a proposed transitional channel for migrants at all skills level, proposed in the white paper, which might potentially run until 2025. It's a bit short on detail, but one of the key provisions of that is that there would be a maximum 12-month period of living and working in the UK, followed by a 12-month cooling off period, and one of the things that, in particular, Becker's analysis has pointed to is some of the detrimental impacts of that very short-term approach to migration on local communities, so I think that if there's interest, perhaps we could briefly just say something about that. For me, I think that that also comes back to this question of the different areas of impact and the different policy areas at both national government and local government level that we then come into. It seems to me that one of the fundamental differences between the understanding of migration and the wish to resolve, for example, demographic and local sustainability issues through migration as a part of that picture within Scotland is markedly different from a UK-wide perspective that is focused on bringing down numbers of migration and, especially for lower-skilled workers, focusing on very temporary schemes with specific blocks to longer-term settlement. That's something that freedom of movement circumvented, and the temporary scheme that's proposed for lower-skilled, lower-paid avenues of migration is very specifically designed to prevent anybody staying longer term. There's a 12-month limit and there's a 12-month cooling off period, so once you've been for a year, you have to leave for at least a year before you come back. That has implications for employers, wherein a lot of the seasonal migration that we've seen over the last 10 years or so, there's been a lot of circular migration, so the same people coming back regularly year on year. Employers, therefore, not having to retrain them, not having to re-induct them, if you like, either into the business or into the local area, and for some people that then over a period of time shifting from circular patterns of migration to longer-term periods of stay-in eventually to sometimes to permanent settlement. There's a coming together, again, within Scotland of the areas that most perhaps need people to stay longer and to bring family members with them and those that would be most likely only to be able to bring people in through these temporary schemes, which, as well as the temporary nature of the stay and the cooling off period, specifically say that you can't come with dependency, you can't come with children, you can't come with non-working spouses, so there are ongoing kind of repercussions in that, again, particularly for more peripheral areas. Indeed, very gloomy, but thank you for your answer. Can I just ask Professor Kerr supplementary to that? I mean, what are the social implications for that shift from long-term to short-term migration? One of the things that we've noted in our previous discussions about post-2004 movement to Scotland is the way that the populations who have come here have actually really enhanced communities in Scotland and have made them more diverse, and they have integrated extremely well in making really important social contributions to those communities. Will there be a shift if we move to short-term? I think the social implications, again, are potentially quite gloomy. I think it's important not to paint an overly rosy picture of people's experiences of migration to Scotland. I think there are people with very good experiences and people who have done precisely what you've just described. We certainly found, especially in more peripheral areas, people experiencing quite severe social isolation, quite severe difficulties with improving their English language because of their work-life balance, because of their working regimes and so on, but not to get too much into that. I nonetheless think that one of the hardest sorts of migration to manage at the local community level is one where there's huge amounts of churn. So, if you have somebody coming where they know they can only come for a year, they know they can't come back for another year, they're going to work in a fairly low-skilled form of employment, probably working very long hours in order to make as much money as they can before they leave. Why would they spend time going to ESL classes? What's their motivation for doing that? Yes, you will get some people who come for a year to improve their English, younger people, students who may be very motivated to do that, but then there are other issues about their reasoning or not for integrating within a community, spending a lot of time in community spaces, their possibilities for doing that. The other thing I think it's important to think about is that over the past 10 years local authorities have invested quite considerable time and resource, both financial and human resource, in trying to build up systems to support the patterns of migration that have developed under free movement. Now, I am certainly not wanting to say that migration from other areas of the world, then the EU are, by definition, worse or more problematic or those of people we don't want because they're not European, but it would require new investment and realignment of those provisions if they have to deal with very different language groups, very different cultural groups and people who are coming and going on a much more constant basis. Some of the worst experiences we heard about in terms of local communities, for example, is the example of very seasonal migrant workers living outside the town, being bussed in once a week into the local morrisons, none of them speak English, nobody understands what they're doing, they don't understand what they're doing, and there's no opportunity for those communities to come together. And we'd see a lot more of that kind of thing. Well, potentially. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much, Ross Greer. Thanks, community. I was going to say I'd like to come back to the minimum income threshold, but since we've just been talking about the 12-month residency, 12-month co-off, stick with that for a moment, is there any international precedent for a similarly developed country having set a policy like this? I realise there is no precedent for the wider situation that the UK is now in, but is there precedent for this kind of policy for 12-month residency followed by, or regardless of the time of a residency period followed by a cooling off period? There are quite extensive examples of that, so the typical approach of OECD countries trying to regulate lower-skilled migration, especially seasonal migration, is to look at it in terms of quite limited rights and quite short periods of stay. Now, whether that's a constructive approach is another question. There are, having said that, some examples of countries which have had a scheme specifically to recruit people across the spectrum, or specifically for lower-skilled occupations, which are facing acute shortages, where they have offered more accommodating packages of rights and pathways to longer-term settlement, or even in the case of some of the provincial or regional programmes in, for example, Canada or Australia or New Zealand, you do actually get programmes that offer pretty much the full set of rights, including access to permanent residence from the outset, including in some cases, although limited cases, in some cases for those which are lower-skilled or lower salaried. So there are some precedents, but I just want to, I think, the overall picture is that OECD countries do tend to differentiate between lower-skilled, where they have much more restrictive packages of rights and settlement opportunities and higher-skilled, where there is this sort of competition for, quote, the best brains attracting human capital, where actually the red carpet is rolled out in terms of rights and the attractiveness of those packages. You mentioned whether the net result of those policies was constructive or not as a separate question. If I could ask that question, is that something you've looked at, or any of you have any particular background knowledge on whether that has taken side the social impact for a moment that we've just discussed, whether there is a net economic positive outcome to policies like that? I mean, I think it's very difficult to analyse and it depends which lens you take to look at the effect. If you're looking at meeting particular shortages, for example, I think you can definitely see positive effects. There are, I mean, longer term, I think it's quite difficult to model those effects, but I think, for example, take, I mean, in the New Zealand Canterbury, I mean, also thinking about regional programmes, the Canterbury programme, for example, which was across different skills level, was seen to be quite successful. Quite often, these things are adopted over a period of years where the economy is facing particular economic or demographic challenges and then they might be phased out, so these tools are often sort of adjustable, but I think the experience, especially I'd say of the, quote, settler countries of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, also Spain has some precedent for this, Sweden as well. I think their experiences are that it's a very useful tool for meeting immediate labour shortages. In terms of modelling the longer term effects, I mean, that's obviously much more complex. David, would you like to say something about that? I haven't actually got any experience of that. I mean, clearly in general, people who are involved in those schemes themselves are probably ones that do involve the kind of work that doesn't need a lot of training, but a career progression is not something that is likely to be an issue. You end up with relatively low-skilled people working, as Becky said, for very long hours, just trying to get sufficient income to do something else, perhaps, but it engenders, amongst the participants, a quite a short-term perspective. It's not a career perspective, if that's the kind of thing you're... Just one scheme, which is an exception to that, is that Canada had a live-in care worker scheme, which was, I think, closed down a short time ago, but that actually offered this package where, in order to attract people to these quite unappealing jobs, they offered permanent residency, but then you had to work in that job for five years. In a sense, it was a deal accepting a package that you would do this unappealing job for five years, but then you would be, in a sense, liberated and you would have family reunion and permanent residence. Some countries take that decision that, in these very difficult-to-fill unappealing jobs, that might be the offering. I think there's one thing about the temporary scheme that raises cause for concern for me, based on the experiences that we've seen migrants having in lower-paid jobs during the period of free movement, and that is that, during the period of free movement, they have simultaneously had access to social benefits, social housing, tax credits and other forms of support. So, what's not clear to me, the temporary scheme says that it will not be available, there'll be no request to public funds, whether then some of the lower-paid work will actually provide people with an income that they are able to live on and live on successfully, even for a relatively short period, and even given that they won't be coming with dependence, also raises some level of concern for me, because we've certainly seen people being very attracted by that, that you could have a relatively low-paid job, but, for example, access to social housing and therefore live quite well, by comparison, for example, to what was available in a rural part of Poland or Romania, but that begins to be brought into question by this new scheme. Given that we've got a minimum wage that's below the minimum amount that you need to live above the poverty line, if you're just relying on the minimum wage and not on public funds, it is impossible to have any decent quality standard of living. However, to move on to the minimum income threshold, a specific question around other countries who've used similar policies, are you aware of the methodology by which they have come to decide what that threshold is? Because there has been much debate here around what the £30,000 was essentially arbitrary. It depends on the system. For example, in Sweden, the social partners are very involved in setting a minimum wage per sector, so that reflects a different corporatist culture in Sweden. I don't think that that would necessarily be replicable here, or it can be set through analysis, labour market analysis, and there's the two obvious approaches. I think that the MAC, I can't recall exactly, chose a particular point in the income distribution, so that median incomes of 25,000 or 30,000 is quite a bit above the median, and therefore excludes workers who are unskilled or relatively unskilled in terms of UK qualifications. That's a different approach. Clearly, it's not a consensual approach, it's just pick a number, and it does depend on the particular way that the income is distributed in the country that is making the decision. One thing that I think we point out is that EU workers or the income distribution of EU workers in the UK tends to be at more polarised than even the UK distribution in the sense that some do really well, and I suppose that this has been most of the focus of our discussion this morning. Some do pretty poorly. They do long hours for relatively low rates of pay. Even if you move the threshold to median income or even to 25 per cent below median income, it's still not going to pick up some of those people. Thank you, Cassie. I'm going to follow Annabelle Ewing's sensible line of questioning about the seasonal agricultural workers scheme. The figures that you've given are that I think that David was hinting at this, that only 365 workers would come into Scotland under this pilot, compared to what the 9,300 seasonal workers that are currently engaged in Scottish agriculture. That's the end of the fruit industry. Does the minister here say that there are already difficulties in that sector? There are. You've all mentioned some sectoral analysis. Has there been any detailed sectoral analysis done in the context of this overall approach across tourism? There's some figures for agriculture, which you've illustrated, but tourism, the care sector and key industry. There's sort of been some macro analysis that the Scottish Government has done that doesn't actually go target sector by sector. In the time available, we didn't think that we'd be able to do that. I tried with some other sectors. I tried with nursing and I actually tried with the hospitality sector, but you have to engage with or to find the key people to engage with. I thought I had, but maybe I didn't. Certainly, there is room to do that hospitality and some public services, including nursing, are sectors that could be beneficial to have more detail on these particular areas. Just if we're going to argue for a change in policy, because this approach would be detrimental to every aspect of the Scottish economy, never mind the sociological arguments that you've rightly been raising as well, we need more detail. We can argue that the abstract is wrong, but this is one of those issues that absolutely needs detail, doesn't it? I agree with that. It depends on what kind of lines you want to look through. In a sense, we have quite reasonable spatial information, and we're able to do that. With the data that we've got, it's difficult to do it industry by industry unless you engage industry by industry. I don't have enough raw data to do that analysis on my own. Migrants are difficult to survey in a general survey that's meant to catch the whole of the Scottish population. Obviously, they move around more and more difficult to trace their addresses. Especially when they're moving back and forward, it's difficult to interview them. There are difficulties, but with the right effort, we could certainly pick a few other industries and expand on the analysis that we've done. The final question that I was going to ask was about your sector, which is the university sector. I don't know if you've done any analysis there. My brother-in-law is a university professor at Aberdeen. They're losing contracts and academic links to both European and other worldwide universities that they've had for years and years until this thing is sorted out. What's your sense of—again, have you done any analysis of that? I think universities in themselves could be described as a powerhouse for the Scottish economy. Any decent analysis in this area? University of the UK has recently done some analysis. Some of that also involves specific examples of people who are reconsidering their stay in the UK, including EU nationals, who are thinking of returning home. The thing that we've got to remember here is that academic salaries would typically meet the £30,000 threshold, but there are a range of administrative professional support roles which wouldn't meet the £30,000 threshold. Scottish universities are very dependent on EU nationals to fill many of those roles. I think that there would be a big hit, but beyond tier 2, even if, formally, academics can enter through tier 2, it's not a popular route. The white paper suggests that, in many ways, it's going to be made more flexible for employers. The resident labour market test, for example, would be abolished, the skills charge as well. To some extent, we might see a relative easing of the conditions for non-EU nationals who currently come under tier 2 and some of them under tier 1 as well, but for EU nationals, and I think that it's about 24 per cent of academic staff. Certainly in the University of Edinburgh, my university are EU nationals. We're already seeing the effects of, in a sense, the sort of signalling that Brexit is giving about the UK as not being a welcoming country, some projection of what's going to happen in the event of not having access to certain streams of EU funding, so the uncertainty over EU funding, and especially ERC and Marie Curie grants in particular, really will influence people's decisions on where they will be located. Even assuming the best scenario of very liberal, very easy tier 2, which academic staff can enter under, we'll still see quite a negative hit for the UK education sector, and I think that the funding is absolutely crucial here as well. Apart from that, of course, there's the impact on students and the availability of post-study work opportunities and so on, and there is some moderate liberalisation there, but really not extensive and I think really not putting us in a competitive position vis-à-vis other countries that are expanding and improving the offering to international students. Thanks very much. Did you have our supplementary, Kenneth Gibson? Just first to follow on from that. I actually had a professor who's German, who actually taught at Heriot-Watt, and he was returned to Germany because the atmosphere he feels that's been created by this scenario has made him feel unwelcome here. Do you consider that the UK Government's proposals could trigger the no detriment provisions of the fiscal framework, David? That's a good question. Do you have the money to answer it? Yeah, we're up for a review quite soon, aren't we? The issue is whether Scotland in the interim cannot be made worse off if its per capita income tax per head drops below relative to the UK per capita income tax per head. I'm looking at recent developments and trying to assess whether the Scottish economy assuming that the whole of the UK economy takes a hit will the Scottish economy take a worse hit. This is nothing to do with the EEG report. I'm starting to wonder that sectors in Scotland that will probably be hit include some, we've mentioned, hospitality and food production, but we are not as exposed in relation to other sectors that are clearly already in crisis, such as the automotive sector. Companies that have very close cross-channel links, Scotland is obviously not so involved in that. The whole picture is relatively bad, whether it's relatively worse in Scotland. My guess at the moment is that perhaps it is not, but that would be a rash forecast to hang my reputation on. It's such a sparkling reputation to me. Davies is very well-respectful, but do you think that more research should be done on that post-Brexit to see whether Scotland outlies? It is a reality that some sectors will be seriously fish processing, for example. That's one that we need to get a teeth into in the months ahead. Does your group have the capacity to undertake additional work? It's envisaged that we will have future commissions. We were set up initially for a period of one year and then, in the autumn, the Scottish Government will review how to take it forward, but I think that we are expecting further work to be commissioned from that. So you've had discussions along those lines with the Scottish Government? That's right, and they're on-going. Thank you very much. Stuart McMillan. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. I've just got a question regarding students. Also, the Home Secretary announced in the 28th of January that, if the UK leaves without a deal, then the UK Government will seek to end free movement as soon as possible. However, I'll also introduce, considering introducing through the immigration bill, this transition aspect regarding to say longer than three months, so that students will then need to apply for permission to receive European temporary leave to remain, which is valid for a further three years. Are you aware of any reciprocal type of agreement that the UK has engaged with the EU 27? The reason for that question is if a student goes to study in other countries, potentially they'll be there for longer than three months. In my case, when I went to study in my third year at university, I was in France for four months in Germany for four months. In terms of, some 17,000 students actually leave the UK to go and study in the EU every year. Is there going to be anything to make it a bit easier for them, or will it be continually a complicated situation? I'm not sure the answer to that. It's certainly true that, if it were not possible for them to go for more than three months, it would affect a large number of students. I don't know whether there are reciprocal agreements that are being discussed. Individual universities have agreements with other institutions abroad and use these extensively, but, of course, have to abide by whatever regulations they're faced with. It's common to have arrangements with US universities, which of course share the four-year, as opposed to the three-year undergraduate degree. I work in the Central East European Studies Unit. We have agreements with institutions in Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine. It's possible to make these agreements out with the EU, but they're complicated. I would have thought that the greater effect would be a potential shift in the fee structure. Obviously, EU nationals now benefit from not having to pay fees in Scottish universities, so if that's changed, I think that that would have a much more significant impact. It's helpful. Thank you for that. A few months ago, when you asked the question about the finance issue of the no detriment, in the executive summary of the report in front of us, it indicates that, if there is a type of economic change, Scotland could be disproportionately affected. However, that seems to conflict with— In relation to migration, my response to Ken was in relation to Brexit as a whole. It was outside the EHE. Thank you very much. When Professor Manning was here, I had a brief discussion with him about the Canada model of differentiated migration in different provinces, which the Mac had appeared to dismiss, although there was evidence that our adviser, Dr Reeve Hepburn, had raised from the Canadian Government that the retention rates of immigrants in different provinces was actually quite high—it was about 82 per cent—although there was differentiation across the different provinces. Clearly, it's an area that there's some different views on. Is that something that you would be exploring in the future, differentiated migration systems? It's possible that we might look at it again, although there has been quite a lot of study of different possible systems for differentiated migration policy. We could revisit that potentially, but we're probably not going to be asked to develop recommendations. I would just note on the retention rates. I don't think that there are particularly robust systematic figures, but you can approach it either way. 82 per cent seems quite high compared to what I've seen, but you can take the figures and say, well, they're losing quite a substantial share, or you can say, well, actually, they're retaining quite a substantial share. That has to be a success. The point about those systems is that they build in a propensity to stay in the particular region from the outset through the points-based system, how it's adjusted. For example, such systems can privilege those with existing ties or family or who've studied in particular areas. You can use soft levers to try to make continued stay, longer-term settlement more appealing for potential migrants. I think that's where the focus would be, but I would just say one final point about those systems. We have to be quite cautious about drawing lessons from countries with quite a different history of migration and, let's say, different public philosophies or traditions of thinking about immigration. Canada, Australia and New Zealand are what we call secular countries who define themselves. Their national identity is very caught up in thinking about themselves as countries of immigration. The UK is quite distinct. When we discuss options for something like the Canadian or Australian system, we have to bear in mind that those are systems that are very rigid and robust in the way that they select, but once somebody is in, they have a very full set of rights and access to permanent residency from the outset. That, in many ways, is an appealing model. I'm speaking in my personal capacity, but it would be quite a shift from the approach to UK immigration that we've seen since the Second World War and across European countries. I just think that we have to bear in mind that we can't neatly or simply import models from different systems. I totally take that point. From a Scottish perspective, given the very dire challenges that we face and that you've outlined very articulately today, what should we be looking at going forward? I don't really want to be drawn on this, but I think that there are two ways of looking at it. One can look at what would be the ideal design of an immigration policy that was differentiated and took into account Scotland's perspectives, or one can adopt a more pragmatic approach and say what do we think is the margin for manoeuvre within the proposed changes to the migration system and look at different ways of tweaking or adjusting or having variation within the points-based system that we have in the UK. I think that those are the two different ways of looking at it, and I don't think that it's my position to comment on which is better. Does anyone else want to comment on that? I think that, in a way, we need an approach to place that perhaps we haven't had in the past. The background is demographic change, and some parts of Scotland are going to have quite different experiences from other parts of Scotland. We really need to develop a broader understanding of the social and economic implications of that. Migration is part of the story, but it can't be the whole thing. We need to have a sort of debate about what is the way that Scotland best addresses the demographic challenge and the implications it has for the sort of within Scotland demography, the distribution of people across different parts of the country. I think that, from Scotland's perspective, something UK-wide is problematic because it assumes Scotland is the same as the rest of the UK. It needs to be recognised that Aran is not the same as Glasgow and that there needs to be differentiation within Scotland. The other thing that is often missing within the discussion of migration policy is migrant perspectives and thinking about what the experience of being a migrant is and how that differs in different places and differs depending on the full package of rights and experiences that somebody has. When we look at issues around retention in place, when we look from migrant perspectives, what makes people stay longer term? There is a cumulative effect of being somewhere over a period of time. There is a really important impact of whether you are able to have children with you once children go to school, once children become embedded in a system, families become much more reluctant to leave. Those things often seem to get skimmed over or missed in discussions that assume as long as we make it possible that everyone will come or as long as we make it possible that everyone will go to London. Those things need to be slightly more nuanced in debate. At that point, we will close our evidence session. Thank you very much to all of you for coming to give evidence to us today and we shall now move the committee into private session.