---

Immigration (Work Permits)

First, I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his role. The longer he is in the role, the shorter his questions will be, in contrast to the way some parties operate. I look forward to working with him. On politics and subjectivity, we will never remove politics from this area of national life, but I agree that objectivity and transparency in the system are exceptionally important. The system is intended to raise the quality of decisions. I hope that we can work together to ensure that the national debate on these matters is conducted in constructive and positive terms, rather than in the terms in which it has sometimes been conducted in the past. On the hon. Gentleman’s particular questions, the skills advisory board will be directly related to the sector skills councils and therefore the Sector Skills Development Agency, which organises and develops those councils. It will also directly involve trade unions and business in a wide variety of sectors that will report directly to the board. I think that many hon. Members are still not fully aware of the developing role of the sector skills councils and the way in which they are drawing in employers, vocational trainers and employees in each area. As they develop their work, they will be able to give very detailed assessments of the skills shortages in their sectors. That is unlikely to lead to quotas in the sense of specific numbers, but it is likely to lead to information that will help the system to decide how many points should be allocated to people with particular skills in certain areas. That, too, will be the principle on the unskilled labour side, which will particularly inform tier 3 of our five-tier system. It will address the lack of skills in those sectors just as in all the others. As a former Secretary of State for Education and Skills, I would say that the right response to unskilled labour is to develop the quality of our skills training across the whole range.