National Audit Office recommends more is done to tackle exploitation in the Skilled Worker route

Ahead of the government’s (apparently fairly imminent now) Immigration White Paper, the National Audit Office has published a report looking at how the Home Office manages the Skilled Worker route. In particular, they looked at whether the Home Office has an effective approach to adjusting the entry requirements to respond to changes in government policy and economic needs and is effectively monitoring and managing the performance of the system.

The report noted that the Home Office did not produce an impact assessment before changing entry requirements for care workers in 2022, nor has it evaluated the route since. The NAO said that there is widespread evidence of exploitation in the social care sector, with increasing concerns about debt bondage, long working hours and exploitative conditions but there is still no robust data on the extent of abuse.

Similarly, the report concluded that the Spring 2024 changes were made with limited consultation or without full analysis of potential consequences for different industries and businesses.

The following recommendations were made:

• in the next six months, work with the Migration Advisory Committee, Skills England, the Industrial Strategy Council and Labour Market Advisory Board to establish an agreed methodological approach to better understand the role that immigration can play in addressing skills shortages across different sectors of the labour market.
• improve its understanding of the extent to which the Skilled Worker visa route is meeting its objectives
• improve efficiency and customer service by using an analysis of its existing management information on operational performance to produce a service improvement plan
• strengthen its approach to tackling non-compliance with visa conditions and potential labour market abuses
• before the end of 2025, work with relevant government agencies and stakeholders to establish new working arrangements to develop a more effective joined-up approach to tackling exploitation of visa holders.

The report also notes the number of people on a Skilled Worker visa who later claimed asylum in the UK increased from 53 in 2022 to 5,300 in the first ten months of 2024. Again, the Home Office apparently does not monitor what happens to people at the end of their Skilled Worker visa.

The first point I would make here is that wherever possible, people will seek to come to the UK under existing routes rather than enter the asylum system and it is often only once they are out of options that they will claim asylum. The second point is that I would be interested in some data on how many of those asylum claims made by people in the Skilled Worker route were subsequently withdrawn, as it appears anecdotally that small numbers of people may be using asylum claims to try to bridge gaps with section 3C leave in the same way that fee waiver applications were being used last year.