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UK tech startups call on May to protect access to EU talent following Brexit, but will it have any effect?

Head honchos at some of the UK’s most recognisable tech firms have put their name to an open letter published yesterday that calls on the government to protect access to overseas talent and skills following Brexit.

The letter, signed by bosses from businesses in Tech City’s future fifty programme including the likes of Deliveroo, Hailo and Funding Circle, has implored Theresa May’s government to think hard about the impact any curbs on EU immigration may have on the country’s booming digital businesses.

It argues that the digital economy contributes nearly £161bn turnover to the UK economy as a whole and that between 2010 and 2014 the digital sector grew by 27%, three times faster than the wider economy.

However, the letter states that the continued prosperity of London’s (and the country’s) tech ecosystem is reliant upon unfettered access to skilled workers from the EU’s 27 member states.

It said: “If tech communities were no longer able to recruit workers from the 27 EU countries, or from other states, many businesses would see their growth slow down.

“Government measures in recent years to encourage founders and entrepreneurs to invest in the UK would be wasted.”

The letter comes after signals from May and her cabinet that the government would seek a so-called ‘Hard Brexit’ in their exit negotiations with the EU once Article 50 has been invoked.

Suggestions by Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, that businesses could be forced to publish lists of non-UK workers have already been nixed after widespread condemnation from the business community and digital firms in particular.

Yet still the noises from Whitehall continue to hint that retaining access to the European single market, and the continent’s worth of skilled tech talent within in, will not be a deal breaker when it comes to sitting round the negotiating table in Brussels.

With London-based tech firms freely welcoming swathes of skilled workers from the EU the growth of the sector is acutely reliant on ready access to international talent.

Today’s open letter is a great way for some of the UK’s biggest tech and digital businesses to show a united front in their almost universal resistance to any potential Hard Brexit course and EU immigration curbs that might come with it.

Whether that has any bearing on the government’s approach remains to be seen.

However, the prevailing influence of Brexit-backing ministers such as David Davis and Liam Fox over the more prosaic, economic arguments of Chancellor Philip Hammond suggests that currently the government’s approach is more likely to be politically-motivated than guided by economic concerns.

After all, if the previously all-powerful financiers from the City of London are struggling to get the government’s ear, what hope does the digital and tech industry have?

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