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A post-Brexit visa scheme to fill vacancies in social care was badly designed and enabled “horrific” abuse of migrant workers, the UK’s anti-slavery watchdog has said.
Commissioner Eleanor Lyons said the care worker visa route introduced by the Conservatives in February 2022 had caused avoidable harm and “some really severe” exploitation.
“In an already high-risk sector where there were large-scale shortages and we needed lots of workers to be able to come in and fill that gap, there was a blunt instrument applied. It allowed for incredibly vulnerable people to be exploited because there wasn’t a sensible policy intervention in the first place,” Lyons said.
The independent antislavery commissioner, a former special adviser to Boris Johnson, was speaking after the Home Office revealed more than 470 care companies have had their licences to sponsor migrant workers revoked amid concerns about fraud, abuse and exploitation.
About 39,000 workers were linked to the firms. The Work Rights Centre said the figures pointed to a “national scandal”. Lyons called the number of licence revocations “alarming”.
More than a quarter of the approximately 155,000 care workers who came to the UK from February 2022 to December 2024 were hired by employers who later lost their licence.
Lyons said that while it was “obviously good” that this government was “cracking down on rogue agencies”, she was concerned about unintended consequences for workers, pointing to strict rules that give them 60 days to find a new sponsor if theirs loses its licence – or face deportation.
She urged ministers to consider reforms such as changes to the tied visa system to make it easier for exploited workers to move to other care jobs, a licensing scheme for hiring from abroad, and tougher penalties for rule-breakers.
Changes announced last week including a requirement for employers to show they have tried to recruit from the pool of international workers already in England before hiring from abroad were welcome but not enough, she said. “The scale of the issue we’re seeing means we need to have a fresh fundamental approach.”
The Observer previously revealed how care workers recruited from countries including India, Zimbabwe and the Philippines were tricked into paying illegal recruitment fees and in some cases trapped in conditions akin to debt bondage, with wages and passports withheld. Last year, an investigation found that companies granted licences to sponsor workers included suspected bogus firms with copy-and-paste websites, fake-looking reviews, PO boxes as addresses and no track record of providing care. In another case, 275 certificates of sponsorship were issued to a nonexistent care home. At least 177 companies were granted licences to sponsor workers despite a public track record of labour law violations.
Employment experts say lax oversight of companies granted sponsor licences combined with the structure of the scheme – which means workers’ visas are tied to a single employer, rather than sector-wide – have been key drivers of fraud and abuses, enabling loosely vetted sponsors to profit from exploitative practices and leaving workers afraid of reporting bad employers due to the threat their visa could be cancelled.
Lyons said she had seen a “real range” of abuses, from “poor working practices where people have unreasonable demands put on them” to the “extreme end of the spectrum”, including “horrific” exploitation and instances of modern slavery. In some cases, workers had sold property and quit jobs at home to afford “extortionate recruitment agency fees” after being “promised a life here”, only to find the job did not exist.
She said ministers had made some positive changes since the scheme was launched, such as requiring care agencies that sponsor workers from abroad to be registered with the Care Quality Commission. But she questioned why it had not been better designed to begin with. “All the changes that have been made are sensible steps. I think the question remains: why were they never thought of in the first place? If the modern slavery charity sector was included from the start with the creation of this visa, I think we would have seen less exploitation over the years.”
The care worker visa route was introduced to plug critical staffing shortages in social care exacerbated by the end of free movement after Brexit. It relaxed immigration rules by expanding the existing health and care worker visa to include entry-level workers in low-paid jobs for the first time. It helped reduce the social care vacancy rate, although this still remains high. But by late 2023, the CQC was warning that modern slavery had become “a feature” of the UK’s social care market.
Unseen, which runs the Modern Slavery Helpline, identified a record 918 potential victims of modern slavery in the care sector in 2023, up from 63 in 2021. The number of migrant care workers coming to the UK fell drastically in 2024, partly due to changes to rules on family members.
Before the election, Labour said that if it got into power, it would launch an investigation into the treatment of migrant care workers. Yvette Cooper, now the home secretary, said the Conservatives had “turned a blind eye to widespread exploitation … putting vulnerable people at risk and undermining our immigration system”.
The Work Rights Centre urged the government to uphold its promise and said its actions so far had amounted to “tinkering” around the edges of a “national scandal”.
It said it had heard from 23 people in the past three months who were seeking help after their employer lost its sponsor licence, including one man, from North India, who was charged £16,000 to work in a UK care home. He now faces returning home in debt after the Home Office took action against his employer, leading to him losing his visa sponsorship.
The centre is calling for “urgent reform” including an end to tied visas and the introduction of new criminal offences and a civil penalties regime to hold sham sponsors to account. “With 470 employers having their licences revoked, this is far more than ‘a few bad apples’,” its chief executive, Dr Dora-Olivia Vicol, said.
The Home Office and Department of Health were contacted for comment. Last week, care minister Stephen Kinnock said the government was working to “crack down on shameful rogue operators” and to get victims back into careers in adult social care, including barring repeat offenders from recruiting internationally and requiring care providers to hire from the existing pool of migrant workers before looking overseas.
A Fair Work Agency is also planned to tackle mistreatment of workers, expected for 2026 or 2027, which Lyons said could be effective provided it was independent and had the “powers and funding to do its job properly”.
It is unclear whether the government still intends to hold an investigation into care sector abuses.
The Conservative Party declined to comment on claims the visa scheme enabled widespread exploitation.
