Boris Johnson to Replace IT Contractors with Indian Developers on Massive Scale

Massive Shortages in Skilled IT Experts and Programmers He says

Boris Johnson recently met the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to negotiate a trade deal with India.

Every Time a UK Prime Minister or Foreign Minister meets up with their Indian counterparts to discuss a trade deal they always end up offering pretty much free access to Indian software companies and Indian developers in the UK. It started with Tony Blair’s government in 1997.

The story always is that there is a massive shortage of skilled IT workers in the UK and that we need to import a whole load from India.

Boris Johnson is just the latest to quote this nonsense.

IT Developer Shortages

He said, while in Delhi recently that “the UK had massive shortages in skilled labour, including experts in IT and programmers.”

This is a huge lie of Trumpian magnitude.

There is no shortage of UK IT Developers etc.

According to Johnson “While immigration needed to be controlled, he was in favour of people having to come to this country and that the UK needed to have professional approach.”

Looking for Mutually Favourable Trade Deal

He said that the UK and India were looking for a mutually beneficial trade deal by the end of the year.

This is not a mutually beneficial deal when it comes to IT Contractors.

The big consultancies have always been able to sell the idea to UK Governments that there is a massive shortage in IT workers in the UK. That’s because they want to import them themselves.

No Great IT Worker Skills Shortage

Let me tell you another way this idea of a great IT skills shortage comes from.

The HR department at companies always wants the IT department to hire permanent workers.

The IT department, however, would often prefer to have a certain amount of contractors on their projects. They bring an awful lot of knowledge and skills to the companies they freelance to.

This anathema to HR.

I used to run a department of IT workers, mainly permanent but with some IT contractors.

To get the contractors in one had to ‘not be able to find’ the right permanent workers’.

We would want to hire some IT Contractors meantime till we were able to get in permanent staff.

However, as soon as I got the contractors in I would stop searching for permanent IT workers.

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

Now out of 81 people I had in my department around 10 were contractors. So, when the UK statistics organisations contacted our HR department to ask if there were any shortages of IT workers in the company, HR would tell them there were ten.

Now, when they went to companies all over the country and asked the same question of their HR departments they would be told something similar by those HR departments.

The statisticians would say that here was a massive shortage of IT permanent workers in the UK.

However, there wasn’t really any at all.

Is Every UK IT Contractor a skills shortage?

All they are really doing is adding up the number of contractors in the UK – and then saying that this constitutes a massive IT Contractor skills shortage which is not really there at all.

Then they decide that visas must be relaxed for Indian IT developers.

It currently costs Indian IT developers up to £1,400 for a work visa. The Government is planning to slash that to make it easier for them to come in.

By 2050 India will have the 3rd biggest economy in the world. In a post Brexit world Boris Johnson and the Conservative government plan to get a huge trade deal with them – and the chips they are planning to throw in to get this deal are UK IT Contractors and their living.

This is deja vu!