Foreign IT professionals good for UK economy-Conference

United Kingdom, 7th February: The UK needs to shed its protectionist attitude if it wants IT industry to succeed, warns a technology conference in the nation.

According to the CEO of UK software giant Autonomy, Mike Lynch, the UK must work towards throwing open of the UK visas for high-skilled foreign professionals in order to boost creation of IT employment in the nation.

Sharing his views at the Intellect Annual Regent Conference, Lynch said that the UK must become a welcoming nation for the foreign IT skilled workers.

That’s the key to generating higher number of entry-level jobs employment in the UK, Lynch added. ‘Buying British’ is not advisable if the nation wants to stay competitive globally, Lynch warned.

The tendency in the UK is that the nation is getting trapped in the immigration debate, said Lynch. Hence, the country needs to shun its attitude of ‘UK jobs for UK people’ or ‘Buying British’, he asserted.

Citing benefits of foreign skilled workers in the UK, Lynch said after these foreign workers having high-skills are allowed into the nation, they will need to hire around 15 programmers for supporting them and those are the resultant entry-level jobs in the UK.

Speaking about the recent changes in the UK immigration by the government, Lynch said that the annual cap on the foreign high-skilled workers will restrict benefits of the entry level employment for the UK workers.

The CEO(chief operating officer) of ERG(Efficiency and Reform Group), Ian Watmore stated during the conference that showing favor to the UK firms while buying IT services and IT equipment could be a bad decision.

It is not in the interest of the UK economy to go for insular purchasing since the economy of the UK is export-driven, cautioned Watmore. Making the process of procurement simpler might lead to alluring indigenous UK companies and could help in growth of the UK economy, Watmore maintained.

The UK government is expected to announce ways of simplifying the tendering process for providing IT equipment or services to the government, Watmore revealed.

As of now, costs of bids range anything between £20,000 and £200,000 every month for procurement and the time involved in public sector procurements is almost double than the private sector, Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister had stated a few days ago.