Business leaders have said the government’s plans to slash immigration from the EU by 80% after Brexit will devastate the hospitality sector.

UKHospitality said it was alarmed by reports that the home secretary, Sajid Javid, is to unveil fresh restrictions once free movement ends along with a requirement that new immigrants will only be allowed in if they have a job with a salary of £30,000 or more.

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“If the rumours are to be believed then the government is just not listening to the needs of business. This is an ideologically driven decision that is not going to benefit UK businesses. It will only do harm to the UK’s economy,” said the organisation’s chief executive, Kate Nicholls.

Mark Hilton, immigration and employment policy director at London First, which represents many of London’s big business names, said Javid’s plan was

against business interests.

“To ensure the UK is at full strength post-Brexit we need to roll out the welcome mat to global talent, not slam the door shut,” he said.



He also said that the £30,000 salary threshold was too high. “If applied across the board, over half the people employed in London wouldn’t be working here. Lowering the salary threshold to the London living wage, currently £20,155, will avoid a recruitment cliff-edge, keep the UK open to a range of skills, and ensure workers are decently paid.”

The Labour MP David Lammy said the policy, which was leaked to the Sunday newspapers, was the start of a “desperate campaign to win the hard-right base of the Tory party” by Javid, a potential candidate to replace Theresa May as Conservative party leader.

David Lammy (@DavidLammy) This is the launch of Sajid Javid's desperate campaign to win the hard right base of the Tory party. EU migrants prop up our NHS, contribute £2,300 more per year than the average British citizen, and add so much to our culture. We need them.https://t.co/ljanOf10Sl

The historian Simon Schama sarcastically asked whether the plan was to allow Javid to boast about “cutting European immigration to 10 or 25k – such an achievement keeping out all those nurses, doctors, students, business people, hard workers on building sites and in [the] NHS from hostile places like France, Holland, Poland”.

The hashtag #Iwouldbeslashed spread on social media as many professional EU citizens told of how they would have been unable to come to Britain if the £30,000 salary threshold had been in place.

The £130bn-a-year hospitality sector is particularly vulnerable to the government’s proposals, as are agriculture and health. Hospitality relies heavily on EU citizens to work as chefs, waiters, front-of-house staff and cleaners, including chambermaids.

Nicholls said: “If hospitality employers do not have access to EU workers – and under the proposed terms they will not – then we will only see more venue closures. These proposals are going to significantly shrink the talent pool for hospitality and businesses are going to be devastated.”

Business leaders in other trade organisations are reserving comment until the plans are unveiled, but have previously been highly critical of May’s plan to remove EU citizens’ priority for living and working in the UK.

They are concerned that employers, particularly outside London, would struggle to recruit if there were a £30,000 salary threshold.

Two weeks ago the Office for National Statistics said the number of EU citizens coming to the UK for work had fallen to a six-year low.

Nine in 10 businesses say Brexit has affected their ability to recruit and train staff this year, the Confederation of British Industry has said.

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation, the professional body for the recruitment industry, has said the public sector, including the NHS and schools, faces up to seven more years of skills shortages, based on current demand.

May was heavily criticised in November when she said EU citizens would no longer be allowed to “jump the queue” under future immigration rules. The 3.5 million of them settled in the UK arrived legally under the freedom of movement rules that also allow 1 million British nationals to live elsewhere in the EU without restrictions.