Care worker recruitment from overseas to end in migration shake-up, as charity warns of ‘crushing blow to sector’

11 May 2025, 23:51 | Updated: 12 May 2025, 07:11

The Home Secretary has announced that the care worker visa would be closed for recruitment from abroad as part of Labour’s immigration shake-up.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer will say “enforcement will be tougher than ever” under the new Immigration White Paper to be announced Monday, aimed at bringing down net migration.

According to the government, the plans will see the number of lower-skilled foreign workers entering the country cut by about 50,000 this year.

Net migration reached a record 906,000 in June 2023, and successive governments have been attempting to bring that figure down. In 2024, it stood at 728,000.

As part of the reforms the government is cracking down on visas to lower-skilled workers, having already announced that workers will require a university degree to enter the country.

The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, has now said care workers will no longer be recruited from abroad, as the care worker visa route will be closed.

Cooper told the BBC it is "time to end that care worker recruitment from abroad" and that British firms should instead recruit British nationals, or extend the visas of people that are already in the country

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She said: "We will allow them to continue to extend visas and also to recruit from more than 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 a 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 a significant change and we're doing it 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 system in the care sector."

But the plans have been labelled as "cruel", and ministers have been told the sector would have "collapsed long ago" without foreign staff.

Nadra Ahmed, the Executive Chairman of the National Care Association said the goverment's sweeping new care policy will impact those who need support most.

Writing for LBC, Ms Ahmed said that "in order to keep the sector sustainable there was a need for it to be able to recruit an international workforce" but that the workers "were promised work and ended up lost in a system based on false promises."

"So, what we need is the Home Secretary to explain how these measures are going to help to deliver a care option if they have bothered to address the fundamental issue of where this domestic workforce is going to come from.

"Their policy will impact those who need care and support most, as social care lacks the workforce to deliver it," Ms Ahmed wrote.

Read her full LBC Opinion piece here.

The Government has also been urged to "reassure overseas workers they'll be allowed to stay" after Yvette Cooper announced that recruitment from abroad would be closed.

Care England has labelled the change a "crushing blow to an already fragile sector", while Unison has said that "hostile language" has seen applications for care visas "fall off a cliff".

Martin Green, Care England's chief executive accused the Government of "kicking us while we're already down".

"For years, the sector has been propping itself up with dwindling resources, rising costs, and mounting vacancies," he said.

"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."

According to figures released in January 2025, applications to come to the UK on a health and care worker visa fell sharply last year.

Overall there were 63,800 applications between April and December 2024, compared to 299,800 a year earlier.

A ban on overseas care workers bringing family dependants with them to the UK came into force in 2024.

Christina McAnea, general secretary of the Unison union said that the "NHS and the care sector would have collapsed long ago without the thousands of workers who've come to the UK from overseas".

"Migrant health and care staff already here will now be understandably anxious about what's to happen to them. The Government must reassure these overseas workers they'll be allowed to stay and continue with their indispensable work," she added.

She also called on the Government to "stop describing care jobs as low skilled" and "get on with making its fair pay agreement a reality".

The Independent Care Group told the Government it has got it "badly wrong".

Chairman Mike Padgham said that "we do try to recruit staff from this country, but we simply haven't been able to get the numbers we need".

"There are currently around 130,000 vacancies in social care. Overseas recruitment brought in around 185,000 much-needed workers. "