Latest changes to the immigration rules: ‘a sub-optimal way to make policy’

On 1 July 2025, the Home Office published a major Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules. These changes, announced less than two months after the wide-ranging immigration white paper, built on a major planned shift in the UK’s approach to work migration, aiming to attract higher-skilled workers, while seemingly attempting to reduce net migration levels at any cost.

As a reminder of some of the key reforms, the government has lifted the required skills threshold for the Skilled Worker visa to RQF Level 6, meaning that applicants must have the equivalent of a graduate degree, alongside meeting minimum salary thresholds which have increased across the board. This means that around 180 occupations, such as chefs and driving instructors, have been removed from the list of those eligible to be sponsored. 

A Temporary Shortage List was introduced as a replacement to the current Immigration Salary List, to carve out a short-term pathway for employers to sponsor overseas workers for select roles that fall below this new, higher skills threshold. And lastly, plans were announced to close the Health and Care Worker visa to new overseas applicants for care worker and senior care worker roles, effectively ending overseas recruitment in social care.  

Soon after the Statement of Changes was introduced, we wrote to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (SLSC) to draw these changes to the special attention of the House of Lords. We were and remain concerned that the Home Office has not provided sufficient information to gain a clear understanding of the impact these plans will have. We fear that much of that impact will be detrimental to the lives of migrant and British workers, British businesses and multiple industrial sectors as a whole. 

The SLSC’s final report on the government’s changes was unequivocal - insufficient information had been provided to allow for a proper understanding of the effects, and therefore scrutiny, of these changes. Below, we examine some of the key extracts of the SLSC’s report, our concerns and what lies ahead for the government’s migration plans.

Failure to consider or convey potential impact of the changes ‘inexplicable and inexcusable’ 

The SLSC’s report makes clear that the Home Office’s failure to provide a proper Impact Assessment for the Statement of Changes limits the ability of the Committee, and Parliament at large, to carry out its scrutiny functions. The information provided alongside the Changes was labelled as “deficient”. 

Given that the Home Office did not carry out a prior consultation with those likely to be affected by the changes, the report also suggests that the proposals were formed before the government had fully considered their potential impact, risks and unintended consequences:

This is not the first time the Home Office has been chastised for providing inadequate supporting material. As we noted in our submission and the SLSC highlighted, these criticisms of the department were also made in March 2024, when the government made widespread changes to the Health and Care Worker visa regime and changes to the Ukraine visa schemes with no prior consultation and inadequate supporting material. 

This led to the relatively unusual outcome of the then Home Office minister being brought in front of the SLSC to answer questions about the poor quality of Home Office impact information in an oral evidence session. Though the current minister for Migration and Citizenship, Seema Malhotra, agreed that providing inadequate impact information “should not be common practice”, the department’s failure to provide even high-level estimates of impact which were available was labelled both “inexplicable and inexcusable” in the SLSC’s report.

Ultimately, the SLSC has called for the full Impact Assessment to be “published before the end of the Parliamentary summer recess” due to end on 1 September 2025. While the reforms in the Statement of Changes took effect on 22 July 2025, either the House of Commons or Lords could technically annul the changes when Parliament returns again in early September. Having the full Impact Assessment for the changes published before then will allow parliamentarians the opportunity to properly scrutinise and respond to them.

Lack of clarity will create uncertainty for workers and worry businesses 

The Home Office had previously said in its Explanatory Memorandum that workers already on the Skilled Worker visa route (or who had an outstanding application that is later successful) would be exempt from the changes to skills thresholds. However, we were concerned that the Explanatory Memorandum also noted that “these transitional arrangements will not be in place indefinitely and will be reviewed in due course.” 

Asked by the SLSC to elaborate on this, the Home Office said that the arrangements would be reviewed following the ‘Earned Settlement’ consultation due later this year. The Committee agreed that this lack of clarity around transitional arrangements “will create uncertainty for workers and employees.”

Similar remarks were made in relation to the government’s planned Temporary Shortage List. We expressed concerns around a potential “cliff-edge” moment for both workers and businesses when certain occupations were to be removed from the list. 

While the Home Office has now confirmed that if a job is removed from the Temporary Shortage List, “workers would be able to continue for the duration of their existing permission”, there would be no right to extend that stay. The Home Office’s view is that “employers and workers making use of the list from 22 July should do so in full knowledge and understanding of its temporary nature, and that future applications are not guaranteed”.

Ultimately, the SLSC agreed that important questions remain unanswered in this area:

Finally, the lack of clarity around the impact of changing skills thresholds will be a major concern to a number of sectors across the country, particularly the care sector. The Home Office considers that changes to skills thresholds will only result in “indirect” impacts on businesses, such as greater automation, switching to domestic recruitment and greater outsourcing. 

The SLSC’s view is that these are in fact “significant economic effects”, particularly in the care sector where “the changes conflict with other pressures such as the need to ensure adequate staffing and the reported high number of vacancies”. We agree and, in the absence of any immediate change to social care funding, ending overseas recruitment in social care will be a real blow to the sector.

Risk of short-term visa exploitation not adequately addressed

Our submission highlighted the potential risk of exploitation for individuals arriving to work in occupations under the Temporary Shortage List, particularly because of the potential short term nature of this arrangement. The Home Office’s response to our submission disagrees with this analysis, pointing to the fact that the five-year nature of the route for care workers has for example “not prevented it being a conduit for exploitation”. 

This is a misunderstanding of the drivers of exploitation. Exploitation has been mainly perpetuated by the system of sponsorship which ties individual workers to potentially rogue and exploitative employers. However, short term working arrangements for migrant workers, such as the Seasonal Worker visa and the Overseas Domestic Worker visa, are well documented examples of short term routes that give rise to significant exploitation risks for workers and leave employment rights practically inaccessible.

The Home Office’s view that “those on longer term visas with a path to settlement may consider that they have more to lose by raising exploitation concerns” ignores the fact that they generally have greater flexibility than those on short term visas to change employment from an abusive employer (e.g. the issues with workers accessing transfers to different farms on the Seasonal Worker visa route). The fallout and consequences of raising exploitation concerns, particularly debt and destitution, are ultimately more acute for those on short term routes. 

These changes must be reconsidered

The SLSC report vindicates much of what has already been remarked about the government’s plans for change in the migration system. The package of reform planned by the government may struggle to achieve its own self-stated objectives, while at the same time doing little for businesses and little for the fight against exploitation. Without a full impact assessment, we will struggle to have a concrete picture.

It is hard not to conclude that the government’s timing of the latest Statement of Changes was highly strategic. Launched shortly before the start of summer recess, parliamentarians will now only have a short window in which to potentially scrutinise and challenge the changes in September before the autumn conference season starts. Regardless, our core ask to the government remains steadfast: reconsider these changes with a focus on tackling exploitation, by giving migrant workers more freedom and flexibility to take their skills to an employer that values them.