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Britain’s care sector would have been decimated by workers had it not been for a surge in overseas recruitment that raised widespread concerns about the de facto work-related exploitation of migrants, figures published on Thursday showed.
Care homes in England are also far more reliant on overseas workers than high-paid care homes in Scotland and Northern Ireland, according to separate figures released by the Home Office, adding to calls for an overhaul of Britain’s legal immigration rules.
CareSkills, the sector’s workforce planning body, said an estimated 70,000 people would work in care in England upon arrival in the year to March 2023 as visa criteria for these roles are relaxed, with a further 30,000 Will work in nursing in the UK. 40,000 people between April and August.
Their arrival has helped to reduce vacancy rates in the adult social care sector to 9.9% from a peak of 10.6% the previous year, but remains above pre-pandemic levels and well above the 3.4% average. UK economy as a whole.
But the Care Skills Association said the surge in international recruitment was only enough to offset the continued outflow of British and EU nationals from the sector.
Meanwhile, union boss Gavin Edwards said the union was receiving daily reports from migrant workers in care homes who described conditions “bordering on modern slavery” but were unable to leave their jobs because their employers said they had to repay Relocation and training costs can run into thousands of pounds. Social Care at Unison.
Growing concerns about exploitation among employers, recruiters, law enforcement agencies and unions were one of the reasons the government’s independent immigration advisory committee last week called for the scrapping of one of the main avenues for employers to hire overseas workers in struggling industries. There is a chronic shortage of personnel, which is called the “in-demand occupation list.”
The list, which allows for the relaxation of visa conditions for certain positions, could drive down wages and leave workers vulnerable to abuse, the report said.
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, speaking on the sidelines of a Labor conference this week, told the Financial Times that “pay and working conditions appear to be the problem”, leading to shortages in many occupations.
She set out Labour’s plan, which is similar to the advisory committee’s recommendations, to set up a task force to identify the causes of labor shortages in specific sectors and propose ways to address them outside the immigration system, including higher wages and training. .
Health and care visas accounted for 35% of all skilled worker visas issued in England in the first six months of 2023, but only 22% in Scotland and the North, according to figures provided by the Home Office through a freedom of information request made by the Financial Times. Ireland is 14%.
Scotland and Northern Ireland earlier this year raised nursing staff’s pay above the UK legal minimum wage, with Scotland announcing a further increase to £12 an hour next April.
Scotland has 8% of the UK’s population, but issued around 5% of all non-care sponsored visas in the UK in the first half of this year, and only 2.5% of care visas.
Edwards said pay was only “marginally” higher in Scotland, but Scottish local authorities were more likely to employ carers directly on better terms than the private sector, while their UK counterparts were legally obliged to create local care markets.
Madeleine Sapushin, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said: “Low wages and poor conditions are the main reasons for the shortage in the care sector. “The Scottish figures are interesting because they show that care workers are being paid above the minimum wage. Wages are associated with lower uptake of local care visas.”
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