LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned businesses in comments aired Wednesday that he will “not tolerate” a long-term failure to train workers in the UK, as part of his strategy to bring down migration.

Net migration levels — the difference between those coming to the country and those leaving — have risen in recent years, reaching a record 764,000 people in 2022.

Last year it was 685,000, driven by non-EU citizens.

Immigration has been a key political issue in the UK since 2016, when Britons voted to leave the European Union in a referendum.

Brexit, which happened in 2020, ended the automatic right for EU nationals to live and work in the UK, and has contributed to staffing problems in a number of sectors.

Starmer said if firms needed construction or care workers — two of the sectors worst hit by shortages — the government would not adopt an “anti-business” stance and refuse.

“But I’m not going to tolerate this year after year after year,” he told BBC radio in comments broadcast Wednesday.

His government is under pressure to bring down migration — both the number of undocumented migrants arriving in boats on England’s southern coast and those arriving with employment visas.

New measures, also announced after Starmer’s speech “to cut historically high levels of net migration”, would include yearly skills shortages assessments and a strengthening of rules around visa sponsorship.

“Sectors most reliant on overseas workers will be targeted to ensure they are addressing their failure to invest in skills here in the UK,” a government statement said.

Starmer said he had been struck by the number of visa applications for jobs involving skills for which the number of apprenticeships in the UK had dropped.

“That signals to me that something is going fundamentally wrong,” he added in the interview recorded Tuesday after his first speech to a Labour party conference as prime minister.

“I want to see a skills strategy that makes sure we’re less reliant on migration, that we’ve got the right skills we need in this country,” he said.

Stressing that he was not diminishing the “contribution that migration makes to our economy, to our public services” Starmer told business leaders many young people had been “let down” by a lack of training opportunities.