Home Office cannot be confident of value of skilled worker visa route – watchdog

The Home Office has made multiple changes to a visa route for skilled workers without fully assessing the impacts and cannot be confident of value for money, a Government spending watchdog has concluded.

The department does not have a full understanding of how the Skilled Worker visa route is operating, the National Audit Office (NAO) said, including what happens to people at the end of their visa period.

The route was introduced in 2020 in a bid to attract skilled workers to the UK but significant changes since then “have not always been based on a full assessment of potential impacts”, the watchdog’s report said.

Entry requirements were eased in 2022 for care workers in a bid to tackle staffing shortages in the social care sector, but two years later the department tightened the rules, including a ban on dependants, as part of the then-Conservative government’s efforts to cut net migration.

The NAO said the number of people using the route in the first three years of its existence was almost three times that which had been anticipated by the department – 931,000 visas issued rather than the expected 360,000.

While the report noted benefits of the route including a positive net fiscal impact on government finances from migrants on these visas, it also highlighted the 80% increase in people staying permanently in the UK in 2024, compared with 2021, the rise in dependants coming to the country and the increase in people claiming asylum after entering the UK through this route.

The NAO said impacts of changes since the 2022 expansion of the route to include care workers had not been assessed.

It added: “As a result, it does not fully understand how the route is being used, its contribution to the economy, or impacts on skill shortages across different sectors and regions.

“Further, it does not monitor what happens to people at the end of their visa period. The Home Office has commissioned an evaluation of the route, which will report in 2025.”

The watchdog recommended this should be published within the next three months and an assessment of what happens to people at the end of their visa period should be completed by the end of the year.

The NAO described the route as a “flexible mechanism” enabling the government to adjust entry requirements in an effort to “balance immigration policy with the need to address skill shortages in the UK”.

But it said the Home Office “has made changes without a detailed understanding of potential impacts across different sectors and regions” and had not always worked effectively with other Government departments.

The NAO urged better use of data to understand the consequences of making changes to the route “both to improve customer experience and prevent visa applicants from being exploited”.

It added: “Without this understanding, the Home Office cannot be confident it is achieving value for money from its management of the Skilled Worker visa route.”

Figures published last week suggested thousands of care workers have come to the UK in recent years under sponsors whose licences were later revoked, in estimates suggesting the scale of exploitation in the system.

The Home Office said more than 470 sponsor licences in the care sector had been revoked between July 2022 and December 2024 in a crackdown on abuse and exploitation.

More than 39,000 workers were associated with those sponsors since October 2020, the department said.

Migrant help charity the Work Rights Centre said those figures are a “shocking revelation of the scale of fraud and exploitation under the sponsorship system”.

Gareth Davies (pictured), head of the NAO, said: “The Home Office, and departments, must make better use of data to understand the impacts of changes to the Skilled Worker visa route, improve customer experiences and prevent the exploitation of visa holders.”

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, said it was “disappointing that the Home Office lacks a clear understanding of how the system is currently functioning, including what happens to people when their visa ends, and the impacts of changes made to the visa route”.

He added: “A more co-ordinated approach across government is essential to ensure that recruitment of overseas workers complements efforts to address skills shortages from within the domestic labour market.”

In more positive findings, the NAO said the Home Office had effectively processed a large volume of visa applications, had generally provided a satisfactory service to applicants and had strengthened its approach to tackling misuse of the visa system.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We welcome the National Audit Office’s report. This government has already begun work to implement many of their recommendations, including a new joined-up approach between Skills England, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Industrial Strategy Council alongside the independent Migration Advisory Committee.

“Under the Plan for Change, we will go further and publish a White Paper to restore order to our broken immigration system. This will link our immigration, skills and visa systems so we can grow our domestic workforce and end the reliance on overseas labour to boost economic growth.”

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