The UK government will scrap the care worker visa route in the coming months as part of a major effort to cut migration, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced Sunday.
The move, detailed in a white paper to be published Monday, is part of broader restrictions on employers using visas to fill lower-skilled roles.
Cooper said the decision marks the end of a “failed free market experiment” that allowed widespread overseas recruitment.
She told the BBC the changes would cut annual arrivals by around 50,000, though she declined to set a specific target for net migration.
“It should come down significantly more” than 500,000, she told Sky News.
The crackdown follows local election gains by anti-immigration Reform UK, which is now polling ahead of Labour. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer pledged Sunday “to restore control and cut migration . . . with tough new measures,” adding: “British workers — I’ve got your back.”
The care visa ban has sparked concern among providers, who face critical staff shortages.
Jane Townson of the Homecare Association warned: “Where will these workers come from if neither the funding nor the migration route exists?”
Cooper acknowledged sector concerns but said care providers should hire from the 10,000 migrants already in the UK under care visas, some of whom took jobs “that weren’t actually here or that were not of the proper standard.”
She promised a new “fair pay agreement” for care workers, noting: “We saw that huge increase in care work recruitment from abroad, but without actually ever tackling the problems in the system.”
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp dismissed the move as “a little 50,000 tweak,” blaming the Conservative government for acting “too late” after migration peaked above 900,000 in 2023.
The government also plans to limit skilled worker visas to graduate-level roles and restrict access to non-graduate visas to strictly time-limited positions linked to industrial needs.
While changes for international students will be less severe than feared, Cooper said universities must enforce compliance with visa rules.
Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice said public anger over migration helped his party top local polls.
He called the government’s plan a failure and demanded a “separate, dedicated Department of Immigration.”
