UK care homes will no longer be allowed to recruit care workers from overseas as ministers scramble to slash net migration to “significantly” below half a million people a year.
The crackdown is part of a swathe of measures in Labour’s long-awaited white paper on migration as ministers attempt to tackle the growing threat posed by Nigel Farage and Reform.
Also included will be plans to deport more foreign criminals, tell employers they must train UK staff and requirements that skilled workers entering Britain have a degree.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper, who is due to set out the sweeping changes on Monday, said that high levels of people coming into the country and a lack of training in the UK was creating “distortions” that were “undermining the economy”.
Net migration reached 900,000 in 2023, although it fell to just over 700,000 a year later. Ms Cooper said the government’s reforms will not include a target number, but added that it had to fall “significantly” below 500,000.
She told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show the rules around the care worker visa would be changed to prevent it being used to recruit from overseas after “we saw that huge increase in care work recruitment from abroad, but without (it) actually ever tackling the problems in the system”.
She added: “If we just carry on saying immigration is the answer, we undermine both the economy and the immigration system.”
The crackdown on visas for overseas workers will increase fears that it will put overstretched care homes under threat of closure.
Applications for Britain’s health and care worker visa are already at a record low after Tory ministers prevented care workers bringing children and other dependants with them in a bid to curb rising migration numbers.
Between April 2023 and March 2024, when the new rules came in, there were 129,000 applicants, but that plummeted to just 26,000 in the year to March 2025, according to government figures.
Earlier this month Age UK warned that overseas recruits were “keeping many services afloat” and some care homes could be forced to shut if they could not find alternatives, piling more pressure on NHS hospitals.
Official figures show net migration has soared since the UK left the EU in January 2020, reaching a record high of 903,000 in the year to June 2023 before falling back slightly to 728,000 in the following year.
Reports suggest other measures will include plans for migrants to speak a higher standard of English to work in the UK and wait as long as 10 years before they can apply for indefinite leave to remain, while visa applications from nationalities considered most likely to overstay and claim asylum could be restricted.
On Monday the Conservatives will try to force a vote at Westminster on capping the number of non-visitor visas that can be issued and disapply the Human Rights Act in asylum and deportation cases.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said that “fixing Britain’s migration crisis requires a new radical approach”, adding: “Labour had the opportunity to do this and have failed.”
Liberal Democrat Helen Morgan said ministers were “tinkering around the edges yet failing to properly tackle the crisis in our social care”.
“Labour must step up and take proper action to address recruitment shortages including paying our care workers properly and rolling out a plan for career progression,” she added.
Chief executive of the Homecare Association, Dr Jane Townson, said: “International recruitment is a lifeline for the homecare sector, enabling us to provide vital support to older and disabled people in their own homes. Care providers are already struggling to recruit within the UK. We are deeply concerned the government has not properly considered what will happen to the millions of people who depend on care at home to live safely and independently.”
