In this and the following chapter on international development, there are no specific PSA target measures to evaluate policy, despite the fact that there are recurrent allusions to both in government aims. Both PSA aims since 2001 refer to economic (managed) migration in some form. Home Office Aim 6 (SR2002) refers to an ‘efficient and effective work permit system to meet economic and skills requirements’ and Home Office Aim 4 (SR2004) is that ‘migration is managed to benefit the UK’. This is backed up by other aims: for example the 2002 White Paper refers to ‘prospering in the global economy’.

The lack of targets makes evaluation problematic; nonetheless there are some imprecise measures from which some partial judgements can be made. For example, Work Permits (UK) has a target to decide 90 per cent of complete applications within one day and 90 per cent of all applications within one week. This has been achieved. Work Permits (UK) provides ‘an excellent service to employers, turning around 90 per cent of work permit applications within a day’ (Home Office Press Release, 2003a; see also Home Office, 2005e).

While such a proxy measure is important, it is narrow. This chapter tries to capture the ‘vision’ of managed migration, which is taken to mean extracting the maximum amount of ‘economic value’ from migration. This ‘economic value’ is defined here as (a) the balance between immigration flows of workers and non-workers, what might be termed the ‘migration mix’ – and (b) the macro-economic benefits (or not) accrued from migration.

Has the vision been realised?

A. Figure 1.1 in Chapter 1 shows the number of approved work permits and first permissions from 1995 to 2005, which have more than tripled, with the steepest rises taking place under the Labour government. Policy has successfully changed the ‘migration mix’, towards a net inflow that favours skilled workers and students. In effect, the system has been remoulded around economic migration (although it should be noted that causation is difficult to attribute, and factors beyond government policy must be considered).

The proportion of incoming migrants coming to the UK for work, alongside the other main categories, is detailed in Figure 20.1. The trend is clearly one of more work-related migration, from 18.2 per cent in 1995 to 24.7 per cent in 2004.