Katerina Rüdiger

London, June 1: British industry will continue to depend on an ever-increasing flow of IT and other skilled workers from India, according to a new report, although politicians have whipped up a climate of hostility towards immigration.

“India is very important,” German-born Katerina Rüdiger, the author of the report, Towards a Global Labour Market, said.

Since India will itself not have enough top-notch IT workers to satisfy its domestic requirements in the years to come, the report published by the Work Foundation, an independent research and consultancy organisation, acknowledges the difficulty of attracting the best and the brightest from India.

But attract them Britain must, the report emphasises, not only because of the skills shortage and the consequences of an ageing local population but to encourage “innovation” in a globalised economy.

Rüdiger said: “Global firms need more global people, not just to fill shortages, but for the sake of enabling firms to innovate. The UK’s best bet for making the most of globalisation is to tap the increasing flows of highly qualified people around the world.”

Rüdiger disclosed that her next report would be on the rise of India and its consequences for the UK. “It should be seen as an opportunity for the UK. At the moment, it is seen as FDI going into India and people coming here. It will become more of a two-way process.”

She explained: “In an increasingly globalised world, international experience, combined with language skills and an outlook shaped by learning from other places, is increasingly important. The UK needs to be seen, along with the US, Canada and Australia, as being among the most open and attractive places for highly skilled people to want to move.”

Her report draws attention to Britain’s dependence on Indian intellectual capital, although a recent survey by a House of Lords committee claimed that the country gains little or nothing economically from immigration.

Rüdiger said she disagreed with the Lords’ findings. “The Lords is not the government. Immigration has kept inflation down, created more jobs, helped the British economy.”

According to the Work Foundation: “Indian nationals are by far the largest group of highly skilled migrant workers in the UK. In 2005, 45,000 came from India, 25,000 from the US, 10,000 from the Philippines, 8,000 from South Africa and 6,500 from Australia, on official records.”

Rüdiger said the government’s new points-based system for immigration from outside the European Union was designed to assist the admission of the most highly skilled workers who wanted to come to Britain to advance their careers.

But lobbies hostile to the notion of immigration lumped all immigrants together. She urged the government to take the initiative and explain to people why highly skilled immigrants were a necessity for the country.

“The government has to be bolder and braver,” said Rüdiger.

She made it clear that the EU countries alone could not meet the skills shortage in the UK.