Social Care News and Features

The UK government must fully fund the introduction of a £10.50-an-hour minimum wage for adult social care care workers in England, its migration advisers have urged.

The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) said a lack of underfunding – leading to inadequate pay and conditions – was behind the significant recruitment and retention difficulties the sector faced.

While a £10.50 minimum wage – at a cost of £2.1bn to the public purse – was necessary, it was not sufficient, the MAC said in a government-commissioned report on adult social care and immigration.

“We would…strongly emphasise that an increase of this magnitude is not enough to address the issues presented by low pay in the sector and urge the government to go significantly further as quickly as possible,” the report said.

Impact of ending freedom of movement

The government commissioned the MAC to carry out a review of the impact of ending free movement of people from Europe and its replacement with a so-called “points-based immigration system” for skilled workers, introduced in December 2020.

This initially prevented care workers from coming from abroad to work in social care in the UK on health and care worker (H&CW) visas, though permitted some senior care workers on relatively high pay to do so. The government then expanded the route to more senior care workers, in March 2021, and opened it to care workers, on an interim basis, from February 2022, so long as they earned at least £10.10 an hour.

The current salary threshold excludes half of care worker roles and two-thirds of senior care worker roles, though the MAC found 9,000 senior care staff had been sponsored by employers to come through this route as of February 2022. It also pointed out that dependants or partners of UK citizens or other migrants, who do not require a health and care worker visa, were an important source of labour for the sector.

The MAC urged further action to ease immigration requirements including making permanent the availability of H&CW visas for care workers and removing ongoing charges for employers using the route.

However, while it found the ending of freedom of movement had contributed to staff shortages, the sector’s workforce problems predated this and were “the result of years of policy decisions not to fund the social care system properly”.

Government to consider recommendations

“We would like to thank the Migration Advisory Committee for their continued work on this area.

“This report calls for cross-Whitehall consideration including on funding for social care, pay, conditions and workforce strategy, alongside immigration policy.

“The government will consider the MAC’s recommendations carefully and respond in due course.”

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