Care minister keen to ‘explore’ single national care visa

The care minister has suggested he is ‘really interested’ in proposals for a single national care visa route for care workers and is keen to explore its potential.

MP Stephen Kinnock was speaking at a meeting of the Health and Social Care Committee where he was quizzed in the future of adult social care services, including its workforce, when he made the comments earlier today.

The union Unison has been championing a proposal for a sector-wide visa model which aims to combat the exploitation of care workers by tying the visa to the care sector as a whole rather than a single sponsoring employer.

It comes as recent government plans for visa changes includes making care workers wait 15 years to qualify to settle in the UK, instead of the current five years.

Mr Kinnock was asked by the committee if a single national care visa help ‘tackle exploitation rather than people’s employment and presence in the UK being tied to… unscrupulous employers’.

In response, the minister said: ‘I’m really interested in that proposal. I know it’s something that Unison are very keen on. They’ve done some really interesting work on this, and I absolutely think it’s something we should explore.

‘Obviously, that needs to be done in lockstep with our colleagues in the Home Office.’

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Last year, the Royal College of Nursing revealed an eight-fold increase in concerns raised by migrant nursing staff who fear they are victims of exploitation within the social care sector.

During the session, Mr Kinnock said his ‘top priority’ was helping redeploy international care workers who had been displaced and those who have had their licenses to work revoked by poor employers.

‘We’ve got until 2028 to do a lot of the redeployment of people who’ve been displaced, because there are lots and lots of abusive, unscrupulous employers out there,’ he said.

‘We’ve had 150 license revocations, 35,000 displaced workers, 60,000 have been affected overall.

‘So, our top priority, is to ensure that those people who’ve been so badly treated by unscrupulous employers, who’ve had their licenses revoked are now displaced…are redeployed in the adult social care sector.’

The minister added that he ‘hugely values’ the role of care workers from overseas, telling the panel they ‘provide care and commission’.

However, he added that it is the government’s policy to ‘reduce our over reliance on overseas labour’.

‘We want to have a system which is really attractive to our homegrown talent, and to ensure that we’ve got adult social care being something that people residing in this country really want to do,’ he said.

This comes after hundreds of international care workers urged the government earlier this month to abandon the ‘cruel’ visa change plans.

Care workers handed a letter to the Prime Minister on 10 June which highlights the ‘devastating impact’ visa changes will have on healthcare staff and patients.

It warned that the visa changes will ‘likely worsen staffing shortages and put vital services at risk’.

Staff, alongside Unison, highlighted in the letter that workers were recruited to help tackle chronic staffing shortages in social care on ‘the promise of being able to settle after five years’.

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It goes on to say: ‘Policies that make it harder to recruit and retain care workers ultimately affect the quality and availability of care’.

This was part of Unison’s Fair Visa Campaign which is calling on ministers to retain a five-year route to settlement, introduce a sector-wide visa scheme that would allow care workers to move more freely between employers (the single national care visa) and deliver a fair pay agreement for social care workers.

Unison have been asked to comment.

Meanwhile, Mr Kinnock also updated the panel on the Fair Pay Agreement (FPA) in adult social care.

Through the FPA, the government has said previously that it aims to tackle low pay, improve working conditions, and make jobs more secure in the care sector by setting minimum standards for pay and working conditions for people working in adult social care, which will be legally binding. It is expected to come into effect from April 2028.

Mr Kinnock was asked how the government plans to deal with ‘massive shortages’ in the meantime.

The care minister said that the government was focusing on filling vacancies in the sector by making the profession ‘more attractive’.

He said: ‘335,000 people left a role in the sector last year, many of whom cited pay and conditions as the main reason for doing so.

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‘Given that we have still a shortage, despite the 1.6 million who are doing a very good job, we have a shortage, we have a lack of people.

‘I think… there’s something about making the profession more attractive, valuing it, giving it the esteem that it really deserves.

‘I believe that it should have parity of esteem with the health workforce, and so we are working on things like the care workforce pathway, which is building a sort of career pathway for progression to see that.’

Latest figures from Skills for Care, published today, showed that the number of registered nurses working in England’s adult social care sector rose by around 1,000 over the past year to 36,000 – the highest level since at least 2019-20 – as overall vacancies fell to their lowest in a decade.