No chick sexers, please, but Britain needs more nuclear safety engineers

“British graduates from university courses were also too inexperienced to take on senior roles.

Nuclear safety engineers and mechanical engineers in the oil and gas industry were also put on the list as Prof David Metcalf, the committee’s chairman, warned the report raised “important issues concerning the continuing need to upskill British workers, particularly in engineering”.

Companies, universities and the government needed to work together to develop a joined-up strategy as the current programmes were “too fragmented”, he said.”

Britain could train its own chick sexers but could use more computer game designers and nuclear safety engineers from outside the EU, the Government’s immigration advisers have found.

No chick sexers, please, but Britain needs more nuclear safety engineers

Nuclear safety engineers and mechanical engineers in the oil and gas industry were also put on the list Photo: AP

By Wesley Johnson, Home Affairs Correspondent

3:33PM GMT 15 Feb 2013

A review of the official list of important occupations that the British workforce cannot fill revealed there could be a shortage of engineers for the next 10 to 15 years if workers from outside the EU were stopped from taking those jobs.

The Migration Advisory Committee rejected proposals to automatically remove medical, engineering, nuclear and education jobs from the list after they had been on it for two years, saying the move would be “disproportionate”.

Overall, the number of specialist jobs which need to be filled by foreign workers is falling as a series of health sector posts were removed.

Among the more unusual requests, the committee rejected a call to enable firms to recruit “chick sexers”, workers who can earn up to £36,000-a-year segregating day-old chicks by gender, from outside the EU.

There was simply not enough evidence that a degree-level skill was needed for the job, in which 800 to 1,200 chicks are checked each hour for up to 13 hours, the committee said.

It added there was “no reason why a facility could not be established in the UK to train UK resident chick sexers”.

Computer game designers remain on the list as the committee found shortages “had been exacerbated by talented staff leaving the UK”.

Two in five of the job losses in the games sector between 2009 and 2011 were “due to staff relocating overseas to countries such as Canada and the United States”, the report found.

British graduates from university courses were also too inexperienced to take on senior roles.

Nuclear safety engineers and mechanical engineers in the oil and gas industry were also put on the list as Prof David Metcalf, the committee’s chairman, warned the report raised “important issues concerning the continuing need to upskill British workers, particularly in engineering”.

Companies, universities and the government needed to work together to develop a joined-up strategy as the current programmes were “too fragmented”, he said.

However, the committee removed brain doctors from the list “in the absence of suitable international supply”, despite there being only 85 clinical neurophysiologists in the UK last year, fewer than half the 180 needed.

Other jobs that did not make the list were “high integrity pipe fillers” and “citadel miniature designers” for the hobbying and gaming store Games Workshop.

Since the committee’s reviews started six years ago, the number of jobs on the “shortage occupation list” open to both migrants and British workers has reduced from more than one million to 180,000.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9873366/No-chick-sexers-please-but-Britain-needs-more-nuclear-safety-engineers.html