Skilled Worker visa route comes under scrutiny for migrant worker exploitation

A few weeks ago, before the many reactions to the government’s immigration white paper, immigration was under the parliamentary spotlight in a slightly different context. MPs on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) came together to discuss and scrutinise the Skilled Worker visa route, launched in December 2020 to facilitate labour migration of skilled workers following the UK’s departure from the European Union. 

In a broad-ranging session, MPs scrutinised Home Office civil servants about the visa route, including its success to date and crucially, the topic of migrant worker exploitation. Notably, Home Office civil servants admitted that the Home Office could have done more to mitigate the exploitation risks that have arisen in social care on the Health and Care Worker visa. Yet days later, rather than implementing worker-centric reforms, the white paper proposed closing overseas recruitment in social care entirely.

Below, we set out the key lines of enquiry by the PAC and the government’s latest position on the Skilled Worker visa route.

Reflections on the Skilled Worker route

The context to the PAC’s inquiry was the National Audit Office’s report on the Skilled Worker visa route. Launched on 17 March, the report noted that the Skilled Worker route allowed the government to change entry requirements relatively quickly to address skill shortages in the UK. However, it also noted that the Home Office had made changes to the route without a full understanding of the impacts this would have across different regions and sectors. Similarly, the cross-departmental work of the Home Office in understanding the role of immigration policy in different sectors had been lacking. 

In the PAC session, Home Office civil servants were frank in their assessment of the route - it had been successful as a post-Brexit “construct” and that it was agile enough to respond to the particular skills needs of the UK. As we explore below however, policy making and decisions “were not done necessarily to the level that we might now want them to be done”. 

The Health and Care visa route

In the context of learnings, particular references were made to the extension of the route to care workers in early 2022 via the Health and Care Worker visa. Clive Betts, Labour MP for Sheffield South East and chairing the second half of the PAC session, drew interesting comparisons between the experiences of migrant care workers under this route and the “kafala” system, a system akin to sponsorship used in Gulf Arab nations which has been subject of widespread criticism.

Civil servants acknowledged that they had acted with pace in extending the route to care workers because of acute labour shortage pressures in social care and the situation around Covid-19. This, they said, had been responsible for “unexpected things happening” including exploitation of the route.

That said, the Home Office admitted that they could have introduced “more tests, conditions and things for, for example, safeguarding and compliance” to mitigate the risks that have arisen on the route. It was noted that the department now works very closely with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) as the Home Office “are not experts in the social care labour market”. 

This is a particularly interesting statement as, just a few days after the PAC session, the government confirmed in the immigration white paper its intention to “close social care visas to new applications from abroad”. Given the fallout to the announcement from key voices in the social care sector, it remains to be seen how stress-tested this policy actually was before its announcement.

Mitigations for exploited migrant care workers

Perhaps the most notable exchanges in the PAC session centred on what steps the Home Office were taking to tackle migrant worker exploitation under the Skilled Worker visa route and what mitigation measures had been put in place to support those already exploited.

For example, the Home Office publicly confirmed for the first time that it had not been cancelling the visas of care workers affected by sponsor licence revocation in a bid to try to rematch them into new sponsored employment by way of the rematching service set up through DHSC’s International Recruitment Fund.

The reference to “allowing supplementary work” above is confusing. For example, though workers on the Skilled Worker route are generally permitted to undertake supplementary employment for no more than 20 hours a week, this is on the condition that they are still working for their original sponsor (as confirmed in Home Office caseworker guidance).

The only stated exception to this rule is for GP trainees, who are allowed to undertake supplementary work without still working for their original sponsor in the four months’ immigration permission that they could in theory be given beyond the end date on their Certificate of Sponsorship.

Exploited migrant care workers whose sponsors have their licences revoked cannot continue working for that employer, meaning they cannot feasibly undertake supplementary employment. It is therefore not clear whether the Home Office has by discretion extended the scope of this carveout to now include care workers affected by sponsor licence revocation action.

In addition, Anna Dixon, Labour MP for Shipley, rightly pointed out the limited success of the government’s rematching service for exploited migrant care workers. She noted the figures from the Yorkshire and Humber regional partnership where, out of a total of 3,750 international recruits affected by sponsor licence revocations, only 117 people had been successfully placed into new sponsored employment within the care sector. 

She also cited the Work Rights Centre’s written evidence, and our position that policy interventions around migrant workers have thus far failed because “they have not addressed the power imbalance at the heart of employer sponsorship as a whole”.

Though the shortcomings of the rematching service were acknowledged, including the subsequent risk of homelessness and destitution for affected workers, responsibility for the success of the scheme was firmly placed at the door of DHSC.

Conclusion

The PAC session made clear that the Skilled Worker visa route has been marred by exploitation, and that this still looms over the route given the ongoing situation facing migrant care workers living in the UK. Despite this, the session indicated no major intention to move away from sponsorship that underpins the Skilled Worker route as a whole. 

This was confirmed as much in the government’s immigration white paper - if anything, the government has expressed greater rigidity in its support for the sponsorship system, while also contemplating giving some workers in below-degree level occupations less flexibility.

Though the government has committed to “exploring” some potential solutions to resolve the issues workers are facing, there are no concrete commitments, which indicates that it doesn’t quite understand the scale of the crisis at play here, both at a local and regional level. 

Our call for action is simple - heed our recommendations to give workers greater flexibility to leave exploitative workplaces and to help pursue their exploiters for justice. These are measures which have been backed by a broad coalition of workers, lawyers and migrants’ rights organisations.

Without these reforms, employers will continue to exploit workers with little consequence, and the government’s steadfast commitment to sponsorship and the Skilled Worker route as it stands will result in a continuation of abuse.