Care homes barred from recruiting workers overseas

Care homes will be barred from recruiting workers overseas as the Government tries to reduce net migration.

Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, said the Government would change the rules later this year to stop care homes hiring workers abroad and bringing them to the UK.

She said firms would instead be expected to recruit British workers, or foreign staff who were already living in the UK. The Government will also negotiate a new “fair pay” agreement to boost salary levels in the sector.

Speaking to the BBC, Ms Cooper estimated that the change, combined with new requirements for skilled workers to be graduates, would reduce the number of visas issued annually by 50,000.

The changes are to be detailed in Sir Keir Starmer’s white paper, to be published on Monday, which aims to achieve “substantial” reductions in net migration.

Net migration, the difference between the number of people moving to the UK and the number leaving, stood at 728,000 in the 12 months to June 2024.

The changes are part of Sir Keir’s attempts to combat the rise of Reform UK, which inflicted huge losses on Labour in this month’s local elections. Labour’s failure to tackle immigration was widely seen as a cause.

Other measures are expected to include new rules that could enable migrants convicted of a crime to be deported from the UK. Currently, only those who have been jailed can be sent back to their countries of origin.

Labour is seeking to create a “common sense” legal framework for immigration judges to prevent illegal migrants and foreign criminals avoiding deportation by exploiting the European Convention Human Rights article eight, which protects the right to family life.

Employers in sectors with staff shortages will have to show they are investing in training the domestic workforce. If they cannot, they will be stripped of the visa sponsor licence they need to hire overseas workers and bring them to the UK.

Bad bosses who break employment law – for example by failing to pay their staff the minimum wage – will also be banned from hiring workers from abroad.

Ms Cooper refused to put a target on the reductions in net migration, which is projected to settle at around 340,000 over the next five years – well above pre-Brexit levels – under existing immigration rules.

The number of health and care sector visas issued annually has fallen from a peak of 151,500 in the 12 months to January last year, to 28,700 in the 12 months to January 2025. Of those visas, around 7,000 are thought to have been issued to care workers.

This reduction followed a Tory bar on overseas care workers bringing their dependants to the UK. Labour has also introduced new rules requiring care providers to employ a worker already living in the country before attempting to hire someone from overseas.

Ms Cooper said she wanted to go further, despite claims from care companies of staff shortages. “We’re going to change those rules this year to prevent the care worker visa being used to recruit from abroad,” she told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

“We will allow them to continue to extend visas and also to recruit from [a pool of] 10,000 people who came on a care worker visa where the sponsorship visa was cancelled. Effectively, they came to jobs that weren’t actually here or that were not of the proper standard.

“They are here, and care companies should be recruiting from that pool of people rather than recruiting from abroad. We are closing recruitment from abroad.

“That is alongside saying we need to bring in a new fair-pay agreement for care workers because we saw that huge increase in care work recruitment from abroad, but without actually ever tackling the problems in the care sector.”

Ms Cooper suggested care homes could recruit from other groups already in the UK having come on other visas, such as those here on dependants’ visas.

Martin Green OBE, the chief executive of Care England, said it was a “crushing blow” to an “already fragile” social care sector, adding: “For years, the sector has been propping itself up with dwindling resources, rising costs, and mounting vacancies.

“International recruitment wasn’t a silver bullet, but it was a lifeline. Taking it away now, with no warning, no funding, and no alternative, is not just short-sighted – it’s cruel.”

Ms Cooper also signalled that, under the white paper plans, any offence committed by a foreign national in the UK would be reported to the Home Office rather than only those crimes for which they have been jailed, as at present.

This raises the prospect that migrants could be removed from the UK for lower-level offences. At present, only foreign criminals jailed for more than a year face automatic deportation, while the removal of those imprisoned for under a year is discretionary.

The change could mirror moves already announced to class any foreign national placed on the sex offenders’ register, regardless of their sexual crime or sentence, as having committed a “serious crime” with no right to asylum protections in the UK.

A Home Office source said the new measures would also cover any foreign national arriving on a visa who was subsequently found to have committed crimes abroad but had failed to declare them, or who were found guilty of any offences in the UK.

‘Those visas should be revoked’
Ms Cooper said: “At the moment, the home office is not notified if people don’t get a custodial sentence, but there are lots of repeat offenders who might be here on short-term visas. Those visas should be revoked, people should be returned.

“So we’re going to bring in new procedures that will mean that the Home Office gets much more information about people committing crimes, and can, as a result, take much swifter action on revoking visas and on removal.”

The white paper will also set out plans to bring back the requirement for skilled foreign workers to be graduates. The graduate threshold was scrapped by Boris Johnson and replaced with a points-based immigration system requiring only the equivalent of an A-level and based on salaries.

Employers will still be allowed to recruit lower-skilled workers using the points-based system, but only if they are in sectors such as IT, construction and engineering deemed by the Government to be suffering shortages that are damaging the economy.

Bosses will only be allowed to hire overseas workers on a temporary basis and will have to demonstrate to a new Government body that they are training British workers through apprenticeships and other schemes to plug the skills gap.

“Combined with the changes to the care worker visa… we expect to lead to a reduction of up to 50,000 fewer lower-skilled visas over the course of the next year,” said Ms Cooper.

However, she refused to set a target. “We’re setting up plans for a substantial reduction in net migration. You’ll know that we’ve had many targets, promises from Conservative governments in the past, all of which have been broken,” she said. “They’ve undermined the credibility of anything that governments do, and that’s why we’re not taking that… specific target approach.”

Chris Philp, shadow home secretary, said the 50,000 reduction in net migration did not go far enough, adding: “If Labour were serious about immigration, they’d back our binding immigration cap and back the Conservatives’ plan to repeal the Human Rights Act for immigration issues.”

‘We’re going to increase those standards’
The white paper is also expected to force foreign graduates to leave the UK unless they get a graduate-level job, based on skills rather than salary, reflecting concerns studying has become a back door to permanent residency in the UK.

Currently, foreign students who complete their degrees can remain in the UK on graduate visas for two years – or three years for those completing a PhD – without having to find a job.

Ms Cooper said that the Government would “continue to welcome international students”, but they would be expected to work after graduation. She also signalled the Government would tackle universities where foreign students failed to complete their courses and overstayed their visas.

“We are making some changes, particularly around the standards and the compliance for universities, because, again, we’ve had problems where some universities haven’t had proper standards in place,” the Home Secretary said.

“They’ve recruited people to come as international students who haven’t completed their courses, have overstayed or caused other problems with compliance in the system. So we’re going to increase those standards.”