Intra-company transfers could bypass migrant cap

Possible plans to allow multi-national companies to bypass immigration laws would be hugely unfair on smaller firms, according to a small business group.

Concerns were raised when Prime Minister, David Cameron, hinted that big firms would be exempt from a cap on the controversial intra-company transfers.

Speaking at Prime Minister's Question Time in response to a question about inward investment, Mr Cameron said: "As we look through the last Government's points system and immigration policy, we really do believe that it will not be difficult to achieve much better immigration control without disadvantaging business. For example, things such as inter-company transfers should not be included in what we are looking at. I do not think we will have a problem. Given the very broken system that we inherited, there should be no problems improving it."

The intra-company transfer scheme has been one of the most debated issues of the proposed immigration cap. Multi-nationals want to be able to keep it in place in order to move key members of their workforce internationally. However, other interested parties in the recruitment and freelancer world see this as a back-door to beating the immigration rules and a system which is open to abuse and misuse.

Disadvantage

The Forum of Private Business believes any Government proposals to exempt intra-company transfers from its forthcoming cap on migration would put small and medium-sized firms at a competitive disadvantage.

They believe that big businesses could be free to transfer their staff from outside the EU to work in the UK, despite the Government's forthcoming immigration cap, which is likely to severely restrict the amount of non-EU nationals coming to Britain.

They say that multi-national firms will be able to quickly and easily hire employees through their offices overseas in order to bring them to the UK.

Forum spokesman Phil McCabe said: "We appreciate that immigration is a sensitive issue, particularly in the current climate of high unemployment and strained public services.

"However, if the Government is going to restrict economic migration, it should do it in a way which affects businesses of all sizes equally. To give huge multi-national corporations another competitive advantage over small businesses strikes us as being completely unfair.

"While most small businesses will only ever need to source workers from within the EU, a significant number – particularly those in scientific sectors such as engineering or pharmaceuticals – need highly specialised skills which require recruitment on a global basis. This is difficult enough already due to the number of legal requirements involved.

"If the Government creates what would effectively be a big business-only loophole to get around the cap, it would clearly fly in the face of everything the Coalition has said so far about wishing to support small businesses and initiate an SME-led recovery."