The NIESR report (HERE and HERE) on the implications of Brexit on recruitment in low skilled sectors follows the recent Harvard report about SMEs after Brexit (HERE). Both set out some of the practical challenges which any government is going to face in the next few years. The immigration problems are particularly acute. Employers are keen to have a flexible system to allow them to recruit from the EU when necessary. Many are forced to look overseas not because they want to but from a lack of interest from UK employees.
This will be interesting. Will British workers get a change of heart or will employers have to move to the EU to survive? We shall no doubt find out, perhaps sooner than we think.
However, more to the point is the system that we will need to create to control immigration. This would be a challenge at any time, even for a competent government, but it is one small part of Brexit. The civil service will need to design, consult on, recruit staff and implement an entirely new system in about eighteen months. There are literally dozens of other new agencies to be created; new laws and new rules of all kinds to be drafted, passed and complied with. Just about everything and everyone is going to be affected in one way or another as our new relationship with Europe develops and by 2019 the government will probably be overwhelmed with all the different, interlocking and contradictory facets of Brexit.
If anyone is sick of hearing the word Brexit now, wait till 2019 or 2020 when we will have been force fed a diet of it for three years in a world that is in a state of constant turmoil and change. I look forward to the Brexiteers then telling us it is all for our own good. As the economy slows (HERE) and people become poorer I think there will be a consensus to all the whole thing off.
