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Orchestras can compete for top foreign musicians
Martin Bentham29 Apr 2009
London's top orchestras are to be allowed to employ musicians from around the globe so they can compete “like football clubs”, under new immigration rules announced today.
The reforms mean that the London Philharmonic, the London Symphony and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras will no longer be restricted to hiring British and European players.
The aim is to allow them to fill vacancies and fight off growing competition from China and the Middle East for the world's most brilliant musicians.
The Government's Migration Advisory Committee has announced a package of changes to regulations on the “shortage occupations” that can be filled by non-EU workers.
There will be a similar relaxation of rules to allow contemporary dance companies, such as Sadler's Wells, and firms providing animation and special effects for film and video, to employ people from beyond Europe.
The changes come despite an overall cut of 270,000 in the number of “shortage posts” open to non-Europeans.
Professor David Metcalf, the committee's chairman, said he was determined to ensure that the country's creative industries were able to maintain their status as world leaders.
He said that although there was no overall shortage of outstanding musicians, evidence gathered by his committee showed that London orchestras needed to be able to recruit “the most talented and skilled” performers from abroad. He added: “It is a global talent market like football and orchestras want to get the very, very best people and the Musicians' Union supports this because more people will come to their concerts.
“We want to be at the peak of global culture. Growing markets for classical music in China and the Middle East make it even more important that they are able to hire the best musicians to be able to compete internationally.” On contemporary dance, Professor Metcalf — whose recommendations must be approved by ministers — said there was a similar need for a number of leading companies to recruit global talent.
He said these included Sadler's Wells, and a number of other dance companies based in the capital such as the Henri Oguike Dance, the Rambert, the Candoco, and the Shobana Jeyasingh.
A third “world leading” industry for which the rules will be relaxed is computer animation in which 4,000 people are employed. Professor Metcalf said there was a shortage of sufficiently talented people available to work in this sector and that with four main studios for visual effects based in London it was important that employers were able to fill these gaps to compete with rival specialist centres in the US, Australia and New Zealand.
Other changes announced today respond to the surge in unemployment by cutting the number of posts that will be available to workers from outside Europe.
Employers will, for example, no longer be able to hire quantity surveyors and construction managers from elsewhere in the world, while recruitment of social workers dealing with adults will also be restricted to the EU from now on.
A further reform is a decision on the amount that restaurants must pay if they want to bring in “skilled chefs” from outside Europe. Recruitment of non-EU chefs paid below the new £8.45 an hour rate will not be permitted, despite claims by Chinese and Bangladeshi restaurateurs that this will leave them unable to find staff.
Overall today's changes will reduce from 800,000 to 530,000 the number of posts in “shortage” jobs for which employers can hire non-EU staff.
