Social care sector sounds alarm over steep drop in health and care visas

A ban on international care workers bringing dependants to the UK has been branded “brutal” and blamed for cutting a “lifeline of overseas staff” after new data showed a sharp drop in health and care visas in the months after the measure came in.

Health and care worker visas granted to main applicants in the 12 months to June fell by more than a quarter (26%) on the previous year, to 89,095.

There was a steep drop of 81% for the year-on-year period of April to June alone – coinciding with the Conservative government’s ban on foreign care workers bringing loved ones to the UK on their visas.

The number of grants for health and care worker main applicants stood at 6,564 for that period, down from 35,470 for the same three-month spell the previous year.

The Home Office data published on Thursday also showed that the number of visas issued to foreign workers, overseas students and people joining family in the UK has dropped by 14% – something the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory said that, when combined with rising emigration “should mean a decline in net migration over the coming year”.

A total of 1.23 million visas (1,234,817) were issued in the year to June 2024 to people arriving in the country for those reasons or through one of the Government’s settlement schemes. This is down from 1,435,372 in the previous 12-month period.

Some 546,774 work visas were granted, up slightly from 538,222 in the year to June 2023, along with 530,496 study visas (down from 656,589) and 84,403 family visas (up from 75,131), plus 4,007 visas for dependants joining or accompanying others (down from 5,167).

In addition, 28,419 were issued under the Ukraine visa schemes (down from 89,226), 22,306 were granted to British National (Overseas) status holders from Hong Kong (down from 37,160), 14,363 were under the EU Settlement Scheme (down from 28,899), and 4,049 were under other settlement schemes (down from 4,978).

Shadow home secretary James Cleverly, who is running to be the leader of the Conservative Party, claimed the figures are proof that measures put in place when he was in office are taking effect.

“When I said I was going to cut migration, I meant it,” he said, adding: “The actions I took as home secretary are working. I reformed visas and cut net migration … that’s the inheritance I left Labour.”

But, while agreeing the measures are working, a care provider described them as “brutal” and said they had “cut” a “lifeline of overseas staff to help staff homecare and care and nursing homes”.

The social care sector has long struggled with staff shortages and care leaders said they had been “blindsided” by the changes when they were announced last December.

Figures published by Skills for Care earlier this year showed there were 131,000 vacancies on any given day, with a rate of 8.3% for the social care sector, around three times the average for other sectors.

That report also showed that domestic recruitment remains a problem, with the number of posts filled by people with a British nationality having fallen by 30,000 – a drop of 70,000 over the last two years.

Mike Padgham, chairman of the Independent Care Group representing adult social care providers in York and North Yorkshire, said: “A fall in the number of overseas staff is the last thing social care needs at the moment, as we are struggling to fill shifts as it is.

“The last government’s brutal measures are working and the lifeline of overseas staff to help staff homecare and care and nursing homes has been cut.”

He said “serious measures” must be put in place to replace the overseas workers no longer coming to the UK, adding: “We desperately need to see the new Government’s promised care workforce strategy and with it some funding measures that will help us to properly reward care workers and enable us to recruit at home, otherwise we will be in dire straits.”

Care England chief executive Professor Martin Green said that “without the proper measures in place to draw in domestic recruits, the gap left by international recruits will reach an untenable level” and warned the new Government must “take ownership of their inherited situation”.

As well as the ban on overseas care workers bringing family dependants, which came in from April, other restrictions gradually introduced by the previous government amid pressure to cut the record number of people legally arriving included a drastically increased salary threshold for skilled workers to £29,000 from April and £38,700 by next year.

The previous government aimed to slash the number of people arriving in Britain by 300,000 a year with the measures.

Other reforms meant overseas students were stopped from bringing their families with them to the UK and made it harder for Britons earning under the national average to bring over foreign spouses.

The Home Office previously said it will be “necessary to await the peak in student applications for the next academic year”, which usually comes between July and September before it will be possible to see the “full effect of recent policy changes and any other impacts”.

Migrant charity the Work Rights Centre called for the new Labour Government to scrap the ban on dependents, saying it isolates workers from their families.

Its chief executive, Dr Dora-Olivia Vicol, said: “The ban on migrant care workers bringing dependent family members may have acted as a deterrent to people seeking a career in care in the UK.

“This has come at the cost of isolating skilled workers from their families. We urge the new Labour Government to reverse this cruel policy decision.”

The charity also called for more protections for migrant workers amid a welcome “crackdown on unscrupulous employers”.

Dr Vicol said the current system, which ties a person’s immigration status to their employer and can see them lose their visa if an employer has action taken against them, is “grossly unfair”.

The latest figures showed 1,023 skilled worker visa sponsors had their certificates of sponsorship revoked or suspended in the three months to June this year.

This is the highest figure for any quarter since records began in 2012.

Dr Vicol said there should be “greater visa flexibility” to enable a migrant worker to find a new employer before their visa expires.

She added: “Work visas should give migrant workers the freedom to change employers and the ability to report exploitation and access remedy, on the same terms as their British colleagues.”

A report written by former independent chief inspector of borders and immigration David Neal and published in March criticised the “inappropriateness of (the) sponsor licensing regime for low-skilled roles” and said it had “created a system that invited large numbers of low-skilled workers to this country who are at risk from exploitation”.

He said an inspection of the immigration system relating to the social care sector had found that 275 certificates of sponsorship were granted to a care home “that did not exist”.

The Home Office said the fall in care worker visa applications and grants towards the end of 2023 “is likely due to more scrutiny applied by the Home Office to employers in the health and social care sector, and compliance activity taken against employers of migrant workers”.

Dr Ben Brindle, a researcher at the Oxford Migration Observatory, said: “Visa numbers dropped in the last few months of the Conservative government and emigration has also been rising. In theory, this should mean a decline in net migration over the coming year.

“But the precise scale of it is hard to predict: we don’t yet know how many of the recent student arrivals will remain in the UK long term, and any bounce-back in health and care visas would also slow the decline.

“Nonetheless, the strong indication is that Labour will be able to meet its commitment to reduce net migration from the unusually high levels the UK has recently seen, primarily due to trends that were already in train well before they were elected.”