Next chief executive Lord Wolfson has urged the government to allow in more workers from abroad to fill UK job vacancies.
UK immigration policy is crippling economic growth, Wolfson told the BBC. He said the government must decide whether the UK should be an open, free-trading nation or become “fortress Britain” as labour shortages undermine the economy.
Wolfson argued businesses should pay a tax to employ workers from overseas, which would encourage them to hire from the UK first.
Wolfson was a supporter of Brexit but said: “I think in respect of immigration, it’s definitely not the Brexit that I wanted or that many of the people who voted Brexit wanted.”
He maintained that immigration should be controlled “where it’s damaging to society” but urged: “Let people in who can contribute.”
He added: “We have got people queuing up to come to this country to pick crops that are rotting in fields, to work in warehouses that otherwise wouldn’t be operable, and we’re not letting them in. We have to take a different approach to economically productive migration.”
He said companies that need overseas workers could pay a 10% tax on those workers’ salaries so that only businesses that really need them would hire overseas: “It would automatically mean that businesses never bought someone into the company from outside if they could find someone in the UK. If they genuinely can’t, they’ll pay the premium,” he said.
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