Adult social care leaders are set to warn MPs that planned changes to Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) risk repeating the mistakes that led to the Windrush scandal and could further destabilise care workforce recruitment.
The warning will be delivered at a Westminster event on Monday, hosted by Labour MP Bell Ribeiro Addy and backed by a coalition of organisations including Care England, National Care Forum, Homecare Association, The Care Workers’ Charity and the Work Rights Centre.
The coalition is urging ministers to abandon ‘earned settlement’ reforms set out in the government's A Fairer Pathway to Settlement consultation that would replace the current five-year route with a longer, contribution-based model for most migrants.
The changes would mean settlement would no longer be granted automatically after a fixed period but would be "earned" through contribution, conduct and integration.
A consultation on the reforms closed in February, but ministers have not yet published their response or an impact assessment.
Hope will “curdle”
Care England chief executive Professor Martin Green warned the proposals threatened to undermine the hope sparked by Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s pledge to “fix” social care over the summer.
"These proposals put that hope at risk,” he said.
“Social care is his to fix, and ours to help him fix, but if he carries on down the path set by his predecessor, that hope will curdle into the same disillusionment care workers have felt for a decade, and we will all suffer for it,” he added.
Skills for Care warned earlier this year that the sector faced a “difficult picture ahead” due to falling domestic workforce numbers and no dedicated visa route for international recruitment.
Windrush scandal
Campaigners say the proposals could affect around two million people already living in the UK and would have a disproportionate impact on health and care workers recruited during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Labour MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill Bell Ribeiro Addy said: "The Windrush scandal is not a historic event when its racist legacy lives on through policy proposals like Earned Settlement, which have already cast a long shadow over the NHS and the adult social care sector."
She added that many workers were now reconsidering their future in the UK at a time when recruitment and retention challenges remain.
More than 30,000 people were recruited to work in care homes in both 2022-23 and 23-24, but that number slumped to just over 10,000 in 25-26 as restrictions began to be put in place, according to Skills for Care data.
As of July last year, new recruits for care worker roles cannot be sourced internationally.
The Coalition’s Westminster event next week will hear from Windrush survivors, an NHS diagnostic radiographer and a care worker who says they now face a substantially longer wait for settlement under the proposed reforms.
