Petition Allow carers already in UK on sponsored visa to work for any CQC care provider

Government responded

This response was given on 16 January 2025

Sponsorship is a vital part of the Points Based System, providing protection for workers. We have no plans to change this approach to offer people to work unsponsored in a sector.

The Government is aware that care workers who have lost their sponsor are finding it difficult to find sponsors. Therefore officials from the Home Office and Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) are working closely with the sector to improve their interactions with the immigration system and to help target non-compliance and exploitation, including updating international recruitment guidance and producing workers’ rights awareness guidance for those coming to the UK.

The sponsorship system is an integral part of the Points Based System, ensuring that migrants have a job when they come to the UK. The UK’s sponsorship system has a built-in compliance framework, with strong safeguards to prevent sponsors from engaging in illegal or exploitative employment practices. Employers are obliged to comply with the sponsor guidance which outlines their duties and responsibilities as sponsors. UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) have a duty to act against those who breach their sponsorship duties, with revocation of a sponsor licence being the last resort.

UKVI compliance teams continue to investigate a range of allegations about the adult care sector. The evidence ranges from labour market offences such as charging for work finding fees and non-payment of National Minimum Wage to the higher level of exploitative abuses such as debt bondage and modern slavery.

UKVI have also encountered a significant number of non-genuine employers and also, in very high numbers, employers not being able to evidence hours of work available to overseas workers.

Without sponsorship, UKVI would be very limited in the action they could take against rogue employers. However, because we have these safeguards, this has led to two strands of action being taken:

• extra scrutiny being applied to employers who are asking to bring over an overseas worker to ensure that they have enough work guaranteed in order to occupy that worker in addition to their current workforce; and
• compliance activity being taken against employers currently sponsoring overseas workers when they are either unfit to do so or do not have sufficient levels of work available for that overseas worker.

Sponsored workers are free to seek alternative employment if they can secure a fresh Certificate of Sponsorship with a new employer. UKVI officials are working closely with DHSC to support impacted care sector workers through this process.

Alongside improving domestic recruitment and retention, we are also committed to improving the way international recruitment works in adult social care, ensuring individuals work for legitimate providers, and tackling the exploitation of workers. Regional partnerships have received £16 million this financial year to support them to prevent and respond to unethical practices in the sector. This includes funding support for international recruits to understand their rights and establishing operational processes with regional partnerships to support individuals to switch employers and remain working in the care sector when they have been impacted by their sponsor’s licence being revoked. 

The Government recognises the scale of the reforms needed in social care. That is why we will work with the sector on the longer-term reforms needed to create a National Care Service, underpinned by national standards and delivered locally to ensure that everyone lives an independent, dignified life. However, the Government do not have any plans to remove the sponsorship requirement, including for those working in Health and Social Care.

The Government is committed to tackling exploitation in the adult social sector, we will also deliver a new deal for all working people. Plan to Make Work Pay set out a significant and ambitious agenda to ensure workplace rights are fit for a modern economy, empower working people and deliver economic growth and introduced the Employment Rights Bill on 10 October. As part of this, the Government has committed to creating a new body, the Fair Work Agency (FWA), to be a single enforcement body for employment rights. The FWA will bring together existing state enforcement functions, cover a broader range of employment rights and include new enforcement powers.

The Government has also committed to establishing a new Fair Pay Agreement in the adult social care sector, empowering workers and the trade unions that represent them to negotiate fair pay and conditions, including staff benefits, terms and training, underpinned by rights for trade unions to access workplaces, in a regulated and responsible manner, for recruitment and organising purposes. All social care workers must be paid at least the National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage for the work that they do. Time spent caring for clients, travelling between appointments, and waiting to start the appointment should be included in the pay calculation.

Home Office