UK to End Overseas Recruitment of Healthcare Workers Later This Year

LONDON May 11: The UK government intends to stop the recruitment of care workers from overseas later this year, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has stated. This policy shift is part of a broader initiative to reduce net migration by tightening visa rules for lower-skilled workers.

Speaking to the BBC, Home Secretay Yvette Cooper confirmed, “It is time to end that care worker recruitment from abroad.” Under the new rules, companies will be required to prioritize hiring British nationals or extending the visas of overseas care workers already residing in the UK.

The government plans to unveil comprehensive changes to visa and recruitment legislation on Monday. These measures are projected to reduce the number of lower-skilled and care workers arriving in the UK by as many as 50,000 over the next year.

This announcement comes against a backdrop of high net migration figures, which peaked at a record 906,000 in June 2023 and stood at 728,000 in the preceding year. Successive governments have faced challenges in their attempts to lower this figure, which represents the difference between immigration and emigration.

While the Home Office has yet to release the specifics of its forthcoming immigration White Paper, due early next week, Cooper indicated the government is “setting up plans for a substantial reduction in net migration.” However, she added that specific targets would not be set, as she believes “they undermined the credibility of anything that governments do.”

Further anticipated changes include raising the salary threshold for skilled visas to a graduate level, an increase from the current A-level equivalent standard. Cooper also mentioned a “narrower” list of exceptions for temporary shortage visas. Currently, roles on the Immigration Salary List (ISL), such as carpenters, graphic designers, and pharmaceutical technicians, allow employers to hire overseas workers at 80% of the market rate. The Home Secretary expects that the combined impact of these various changes will result in “a reduction of up to 50,000 fewer lower skilled visas over the course of the next year.”

Home Secretary  clarified to the BBC that while new overseas recruitment for care workers is set to end, existing care worker visas can still be extended. She emphasized that the sector should prioritize recruiting from the approximately 10,000 migrants already in the UK on care worker visas. Cooper highlighted that some of these individuals “came on a care worker visa… to jobs that weren’t actually here or that were not of the proper standard.”

“Care companies should be recruiting from that pool of people rather than recruiting from abroad,” she stated.

Cooper also announced that this shift in recruitment strategy will be complemented by a new “fair pay agreement” for care workers. ¹ She criticized previous approaches, noting, “We saw that huge increase in care work recruitment from abroad, but without actually ever tackling the problems in the system,” which she identified as including low pay that discourages UK residents from applying for these roles.