Scotland’s Visa Paper Meets the £41,700 Salary Floor

Kelly Hardman, a director at immigration firm Fragomen in Scotland, said on 6 October 2026 that UK visa rules built on national averages cannot serve Scotland’s labour market. Her piece rides a Scottish Government paper published on 29 August 2026 that again asks London for a Scottish Visa, a rural pilot and a graduate route.

None of those routes is law. The squeeze that makes the paper feel late is already in force: a skilled-worker pay floor of £41,700, a degree-level skill bar, a closed overseas care route, and a shortage list that runs out for most jobs on 31 December 2026.

Holyrood Puts Three Visa Routes Back on the Table

Business Minister Tom Arthur used the 29 August paper to put a visa system that supports Scotland in front of the UK Migration Minister. Submitting Scottish Visa proposals was listed as a 100 Days commitment. Immigration stays reserved to Westminster, so every model still needs the Home Office.

The paper is explicit that independence, or a full transfer of immigration powers, would let Edinburgh write its own system. The routes on the page are written to work inside the UK framework instead. Hardman, who is a solicitor in Scotland, England and Wales and is based in Edinburgh, treats that as the practical opening, not a constitutional endgame.

A Scottish Visa would let a person enter the UK to live and work in Scotland, with a Scottish tax code as one condition. The paper wants no salary threshold on the route, though earnings could still sit in a selection process, and it wants a visa issued for five years and three months so the holder can apply for indefinite leave to remain after five years of residence. Employers would not sponsor the visa. Holyrood says that matters because small and medium firms make up a larger share of Scotland’s economy than in the rest of the UK.

THREE PROPOSALS AGAINST THE CURRENT ROUTE

Four delivery models sit behind the Scottish Visa heading. In the tightest, the Home Office would write the rules, take the applications and issue the visa. In the loosest, Scottish ministers would set criteria and assess applicants, then send files to the Home Office for identity and security checks only. Two middle options split the criteria work and the decision work. All four still end with a UK visa.

The rural pilot is smaller and more local. Holyrood wants three to five communities, drawn if possible around travel-to-work areas, tried for five years. A working cap of 300 people per community across the whole pilot would mean 900 people if three areas join and 1,500 if five do. Employers would pick candidates. The Home Office would still do security checks and the final decision. Partners on the ground would handle settlement support. The paper says the same design could be offered to rural areas in any of the four UK nations.

The £41,700 Floor Sits Above Scotland’s Median Pay

The Home Office skilled-worker page tells applicants they must be paid £41,700 a year or the going rate, whichever is higher. That general floor has applied since 22 July 2025. The same date pushed most new sponsorships to RQF level 6, a bachelor’s degree standard. Medium-skilled jobs remain open only if they sit on the immigration salary list or the temporary shortage list, or if the worker is extending from an older certificate of sponsorship.

Hardman put the pinch in cash terms. She wrote that median full-time earnings in Scotland in 2024 reached around £38,500 a year, against a skilled-worker floor of £41,700. “A level manageable in London can become a recruitment barrier in parts of Scotland, even where vacancies are genuine and economic need is clear,” she wrote, pointing to energy transition, space, defence, agriculture, hospitality, care, construction and tourism.

The 2025 pay data complicates the national story without lifting the floor. Scottish Government figures from the Office for National Statistics’ Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings put median full-time weekly pay in Scotland at £773.80 in 2025, up 4.6 per cent on the year. The UK median was £766.60, up 5.3 per cent. Scotland sat slightly above the UK line, not below it. London’s workplace median was £958.2 a week.

Annualised, Scotland’s £773.80 a week is £40,237.60. That still sits £1,462.40 under the £41,700 visa floor, whose weekly equivalent is £801.92. London’s weekly median clears that line. The UK median does not. A Scotland-only pay discount would be a weaker case if the argument stopped at the national average. It does not, because going rates are set occupation by occupation, and because the jobs Holyrood keeps naming are not the median job.

The Migration Advisory Committee, in its December 2025 review of salary requirements, said it does not recommend regional variation in skilled-worker thresholds, on the grounds that wages vary more inside regions than across them. That finding is the intellectual wall behind a UK-wide floor. It is also why a Scottish Visa without a salary threshold, rather than a slightly lower Scottish number, is the paper’s actual demand.

THE NUMBERS BEHIND THE PAPER

• Pay floor: New skilled-worker applicants must usually meet £41,700 a year or the going rate, from 22 July 2025.
• Scotland weekly median: Full-time pay was £773.80 in 2025, against a UK median of £766.60 and a London median of £958.2.
• Ageing: 21.0 per cent of Scotland was aged 65 and over at mid-2025, up from 16.3 per cent at mid-2005, a rise of 4.7 points in 20 years.
• Depopulation: 20 out of 32 council areas lost people between mid-2024 and mid-2025.

Hardman also cited employer sentiment that the paper uses as political cover: 68 per cent of Scottish businesses, she wrote, see migration as vital to critical skills shortages, and 76 per cent support letting shortage sectors recruit overseas. Those shares are hers, restated from the government case. They describe a demand for people, not a finding that Scotland is a low-pay nation.

Care, Islands and the Jobs That Miss the Cut

The sharper collision is in the jobs that never lived near £41,700. Arthur’s announcement used the UK’s closure of the adult social care visa route as the example that rural and island services now carry more risk. New overseas recruitment for care workers and senior care workers stopped in July 2025. The paper says a Scottish-specific route is now the better answer for social care than another exemption bolted onto a closed UK path.

Rural and island vacancies are the other half of that argument. Few of those roles, the paper says, meet the salary thresholds or the other tests on existing routes. The Rural Visa is written as a community project, not a sector list: a shop, a care shift, a boat, a clinic, if the community says the post is what keeps the place viable. Conditions of stay in the community would be strict at first and would ease over four years.

A sponsor licence, for firms that stay on the UK skilled-worker path, costs £611 for small businesses and charities and £1,682 for other employers, and the Home Office says it usually takes around eight weeks. That is before visa fees. For a small rural employer, the licence is the gate in front of the pay floor.

A migration system designed around UK-wide averages, which is what we have now, cannot adequately respond to Scotland’s demographic and geographic circumstances.

Tom Arthur, Business Minister, Scottish Government announcement, 29 August 2026

Arthur also pointed to ageing and to places where the population is already falling. The mid-2025 population estimates for Scotland sit in his background note: 20 of 32 councils down on the year, people aged 65 and over at 21.0 per cent, children aged 0 to 15 down from 18.2 per cent at mid-2005 to 15.8 per cent. The working-age base is the thing the paper is trying to buy time for.

Job boards have spent the weeks since August telling would-be applicants that the three routes are proposals, not open products. That warning is doing real work. A government PDF with the word visa in the title gets read as a launch. It is not one. The objection that meets any extra inward route is also already in plain view: more people still have to live somewhere, and several Scottish cities are already arguing over housing. A rural pilot of 300 people per community does not answer a city housing queue, and it was not designed to.

Fresh Talent Already Tested a Scotland-Only Route

Scotland has run a version of this experiment. Jack McConnell, then first minister, launched the Fresh Talent Initiative in 2004 to counter what he called a falling population. Because immigration was reserved under the Scotland Act 1998, the Home Office had to agree. Fresh Talent: Working in Scotland, live from summer 2005, let overseas graduates of Scottish institutions stay for two years to look for work.

The scheme was folded into the UK points-based system on 29 June 2008. A UK-wide post-study work visa then ran until 2012, when it was abolished. Holyrood spent the next decade asking for it back. A UK graduate route later returned, and the 29 August paper is now trying to protect a Scottish hold on that pipeline before the UK shortens it.

TWENTY YEARS OF THE SAME ASK

1. Summer 2005: Fresh Talent: Working in Scotland starts, a two-year post-study route for overseas graduates of Scottish institutions.
2. 29 June 2008: The scheme is subsumed into the UK points-based system.
3. 2012: The UK-wide post-study work visa is abolished.
4. January 2020: The Scottish Government publishes Migration: Helping Scotland Prosper and sets out a Scottish Visa, citing Canada and Australia.
5. September 2022: A Rural Visa pilot is proposed after the Migration Advisory Committee backed the idea of a trial and the Home Office said it would consider a proposal.
6. 4 April 2024: The Immigration Salary List replaces the Shortage Occupation List, with a handful of Scotland-only entries.
7. 22 July 2025: The skilled-worker general floor moves to £41,700, most new jobs must be degree-level, and new overseas care recruitment closes.
8. April 2025: Stephen Gethins MP introduces the Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill, which would transfer legislative competence over immigration to Holyrood.
9. 29 August 2026: Arthur publishes the new paper and invites the UK Migration Minister to talks.
10. 6 October 2026: Hardman argues that place-based growth is empty if access to people stays calibrated to national averages.

Hardman treats the Gethins bill as the right question rather than a finished answer. Full devolution, she wrote, need not be the starting point. A time-limited pilot could test a Scottish residence condition, regional pay flexibility, a formal role for government and industry in shortage lists, and stronger post-study options. That is the 2005 logic with 2026 paperwork.

The political split has not moved much either. Immigration is reserved, so every Scottish visa can be framed in the Commons as a grievance machine. It can also be framed, as Hardman frames it, as an economic tool the UK already uses in other settings through sponsorship, tax codes and digital status. Those two stories use the same bill and do not meet.

Why a Scottish Tax Code Is the Proposed Lock

The leak question is the one that has killed regional visas in UK debates for years. If a person can take a Scottish Visa and then work from a laptop in Manchester, the route is a back door. The paper’s lock is residence, enforced through things the UK already runs: a Scottish tax code, digital immigration status, right-to-work checks, payroll evidence, and data-sharing with Immigration Enforcement and HMRC.

Employers already have to check status and conditions. A Scotland-only condition, the paper says, could be written onto that status so a check shows the geographic limit. Hardman calls administrative complexity an argument for good design, not for doing nothing, and she flags remote and hybrid work as the hard case. There is no physical border to lean on.

If the UK government is serious about place-based growth, immigration flexibility should form part of the economic toolkit – and Scotland is the place to start.

Kelly Hardman, director, Fragomen in Scotland, 6 October 2026

Canada and Australia are the models Holyrood keeps citing, because provinces and states there already nominate people for national visas. The Scottish paper’s Model 3 is that shape: Edinburgh would assess and nominate, London would still issue. Model 4 goes further and leaves the Home Office with identity and security only. No model lets Holyrood stamp a passport on its own.

Settlement is the other lock. The UK has been consulting on longer, “earned” routes to indefinite leave. Scottish ministers want five years of residence and compliance to remain enough. The 5-year-and-3-month issue period is there so a person is not forced through extra applications on the way. That is a fight about how long a worker must wait before they are allowed to stay, and it sits inside the visa design rather than beside it.

Scotland’s Migration Service, launched in 2024 to help employers, investors and individuals use the current UK rules, has contracts through March 2027, with a new procurement due in autumn 2026. The paper promises more money for that service in this parliament. It is a navigation desk, not a visa. Funding for the Addressing Depopulation Action Plan was increased by almost 50 per cent this year, Arthur’s note says. Those are the levers Edinburgh already holds.

The Immigration Salary List Expires in December

The one Scotland-shaped concession inside the current rules is small, and it has a date on it. If a job is on the jobs on the immigration salary list, the general pay floor can drop to £33,400, and some medium-skilled roles stay sponsorable. Most of those entries, other than care workers and senior care workers, are due to end for new certificates of sponsorship on 31 December 2026. Care stays on the list until 22 July 2028, after the overseas care route itself has already closed to new recruits.

SCOTLAND-ONLY JOBS ON THE SALARY LIST

• Fishing boat masters: Managers and proprietors in forestry, fishing and related services, occupation code 1212, Scotland only.
• Nuclear chemists: Chemical scientists, code 2111, Scotland only and limited to nuclear industry jobs.
• Boat and ship builders: Boat and ship builders and repairers, code 5235, Scotland only, all jobs in that code.

Those three lines are the UK system’s existing admission that Scotland’s labour market is not identical to the rest of the country. They are also narrow. A fishing boat master is not a care shift on an island, and a nuclear chemist is not a hospitality manager in a town that just lost population. The paper wants Scotland’s priority sectors written into the Temporary Shortage List, with a way to add occupations when shortages show up outside the usual review cycle. The Scottish Government has said the Home Office has still to answer the Migration Advisory Committee on that list, with a response expected before the salary list closes.

Hardman’s next step is a pilot with evaluation attached, not a second white paper. Arthur has asked for talks. Forty days after the 29 August publication, there is still no Scottish Visa to apply for, and the skilled-worker floor remains £41,700. The salary list’s end date is the fact that does not need a ministerial reply. Most of the discounted jobs fall off on 31 December 2026 whether or not anyone in London opens the paper.