EU is working in the dark over UK IT skills shortages

A senior member of the EU skills planning team in Brussels has told UKTECH he is using information submitted by the UK Home Office in 2000 to plan for skills shortages in 2002/3 because he has no other official information to go on.

UKTECH broke the news in December that the Home Office was referring to documents featuring information collected during positive market conditions in 1999 as a justification to increase the number of foreign workers in the UK in 2002.

Johannes Van Der Velden, who is currently writing the Member States' Employment Committee Report, which influences skills importation requirements for 2002/3, said he was having to work with old information because he had been sent nothing since.

"We're using figures from 2000 to draft the UK skills shortage requirements for 2002 because we don't have anything else to work with. We'll continue to do this until we get some new information... It's very frustrating" - Johannes Van Der Velden, a senior member of the EU skills planning team

He said: "I draft guidelines using the indicators I have been given by each country. From this information EU countries decide how many people they must import to cover shortages in each different sector, including in IT, which is one of the sectors we look into most thoroughly.

"We don't have data for skills shortages in the UK. We have had no indicators since May 1, 2000 when the Home Office last sent them to us. We had no figures for May 1 2001 and we expect the next set to be submitted from EU countries on May 1, 2002.

"It makes it very difficult to tell what the skills shortages actually are."

Mr Van Der Velden denied this amounted to 'guesswork' and said he was trying to get it updated.

He explained: "We're using the figures from 2000 to draft the UK skills shortage requirements for 2002 because we don't have anything else to work with. We'll continue to do this until we get some new information.

"It's very frustrating, but I see it all as a challenge. The overall process of tackling skills shortage problems in the UK depends on whether you're taking a short or long-term view on immigration, but primarily, countries should first look at relieving existing bottlenecks.

"In the last two years the European Government has started to consider improving skills via education - but you can't just bring in new education policies and expect things to change for the better in the space of one or two years. It doesn't look good for the UK education system in terms of introducing policy plans like these. That's why you have to bring in foreign workers, because they're better than you and your system.

"The situation in the UK is not as bad as it is in other Member States. The UK probably ranks about 11th out of 15 countries in Europe in terms of skills shortages. The countries with the biggest problems are Germany and Spain."

The number of advertised IT jobs in the UK has fallen dramatically over the past year, casting doubts over the Home Office's critical demand skills list.

The Professional Contractors Group has supplied Work Permits UK, who manage the list, with evidence of out of work contractors specialising in the skills it has tabled as being in short supply. A proportion of these skills have consequently been removed from the list.

The evidence suggests UK contractors are being pushed out of their positions and replaced with foreign workers who are hired out by agencies to clients at a comparatively lower rate.

UKTECH asked the Home Office for a response to Mr Van Der Velden's comments, but was forwarded on to the DTI.

A DTI spokesman said: "The Government does not undertake extensive research in every sector of every industry to analyse its skills demands. When it does look at a sector, this information usually comes from the industry itself, as in this case.

"I cannot comment on what information was submitted by the Home Office in the past, or what they will submit in the future. The EU has not requested such information from the DTI, and our understanding is that they tend to use industry sources, like these, when they do need information."

Job cuts figures announced in 2001 and the number of foreign workers granted fast track visas to fill UK IT positions draw a number of parallels...

• Senior Java/JavaScript Architects
• Business Analysts
• Network Specialists
• Analyst Programmer
• Active Server Pages/Activex
• Database Specialist C and C++ programming languages
• Software Engineers in: Cool:gen
• Peoplesoft SQL Server
• XML/DHTML
• Oracle - Data Base Administrator
• Broadvision E-Commerce Tools
• CRM and CTI packages - especially Siebel, Clarify and Oracle CRM

• IT related occupations (not listed) - 7,759
• Software engineers - 4,681
• Analyst programmers - 2,505
• System analysts - 2,375
• Computer programmers - 1,293
• Computer engineers - 410
• Business analysts - 331
• Network specialists - 304
• Project managers - 300
• IT managers - 172
• Database specialists - 162

• Fujitsu cuts a further 4,500 jobs - October 2001
• Computer Associates cuts staff by 900 - October 2001
• EMC cuts 2,400 jobs - September 2001
• Fujitsu closes Eire chip plant and cuts 338 jobs - September 2001
• Mitsubishi cuts further 1,000 jobs-September 2001
• Fujitsu slashes 550 jobs-August 2001
• Baltimore cuts 400 more staff - August 2001
• Ericsson may cut 10,000 more jobs - July 2001
• Philips ready to cut 4,000 jobs - July 2001
• Motorola cuts another 4,000 jobs - July 2001
• Cap Gemini cuts 277 jobs - July 2001
• Compaq cuts a total of 8,500 jobs - July 2001
• Siemens cuts 1600 jobs - July 2001
• Nortel cuts 330 jobs - June 2001
• Bookham cuts a further 100 jobs - June 2001
• Xerox plans 1,300 job cuts - June 2001

Existing skills shortages in the IT sector according to Work Permits UK

A breakdown of the 20,000 fast track visas issued so far (Source: Home Office)

A few examples of job cuts between June-October 2001

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Richard Powell, UKTECH