Westminster has certainly not handed over the powers of immigration control to the devolved administrations. Cardiff, Holyrood, and Belfast cannot issue visas, deport foreign nationals, or restrict the number of people who come to Wales through direct legislation, but this does not mean that the devolved administrations are powerless to affect the demographic composition of their populations.
The Welsh government, which has been dominated by the Labour party since it came into existence, could do much more to protect the Welsh population from society-altering demographic change. Westminster is not the only centre of power in the United Kingdom and British/Welsh nationalists are very much right to target the administration in Cardiff.
In this piece, much as we did in our earlier piece on Scotland, We are going to outline a series of policy options which a nationalist government in Wales could take without fundamentally altering the current constitutional order in the United Kingdom. Wales does not need to secede or abrogate the British system of government in order to protect itself from the demographic change.
Policy Areas – Tax:
The first significant change of policy which the Welsh parliament could enact would be to curtail the legal migrant population by changing the tax structure of Wales. The Welsh government has control over a limited but powerful set of taxes ranging from the ability to vary the income tax rate to powers over local taxation and taxation payed on the purchase and disposal of land. Taxes such as the non-domestic (business) rate of taxation could be separated into bands which increase the tax on any business which employs non-UK citizens, perhaps increasing the rate of tax on a business by 1-3% for each foreigner on the payroll of a business subject to non-domestic property rates.
There is also the land transaction tax, which replaced the stamp duty in Wales in 2018. The Welsh government could create additional tax-bands which add percentage points to foreign buyers seeking to acquire land in Wales, thus ensuring that the native Welsh are given preferential treatment in the acquisition of homes and property.
Property:
Property, homes, renting and housing are another policy arena where a nationalist government in Cardiff could curtail immigration. Aside from simple taxation on the exchange of land and property, the Welsh government has control over Housing and Rental properties in Wales. In 2022 the Welsh government passed legislation allowing councils to apply taxes up to 300% on second-home buyers in the country, and this could be expanded to apply a heavy tax on foreign property buyers and renters.
Another alternative would be to more steeply tax those landlords who wish to rent to foreigners instead of British citizens. The Welsh government might also try directly prohibiting the sale of homes to foreign citizens, though this is constitutionally ambiguous at the moment.
Social Housing:
Of course many immigrants to Wales do not buy property, but instead rent privately or in many cases seek out social housing. Currently some 17% of immigrants in the United Kingdom occupy social housing places, displacing native Britons (and therefore the Welsh) from social services which they have paid for for generations. The Welsh government has control over social housing, social welfare, and town planning related matters. These powers mean that a pro-Welsh administration in Cardiff could, through the passage of new legislation in these areas, restrict social housing availability so that only citizens of the United Kingdom, or even only those with a Welsh PAYE code, also known as a C-code.
The Welsh government could also speed up the process by inserting provisions into legislation which mandate that non-citizens currently resident in Wales will be unable to move to a new social housing unit once they leave their current unit. With no land to buy, and limited opportunities to access social housing, many immigrants, settled and new alike, would elect to look outside of Wales for a place to settle.
