Lords Committee questions effectiveness of moves to re-employ mistreated care workers

The Government states that the pool of unemployed care workers has arisen because some employers have failed to provide workers with the hours they were promised, or have subjected them to “appalling exploitation”, including modern slavery. This has led to some employers having their licences to employ overseas workers revoked, leaving the employees jobless.

To address the issue, the Home Office is requiring care providers in England to attempt to recruit from the pool before they can seek to sponsor new recruits from overseas. The Government states that this will assist the workers into employment and will encourage care providers to benefit from a readily available and experienced workforce. Providers will not be obliged to take on workers from the pool and will still be able to sponsor new migrants if no suitable workers are available in the pool.

To help ‘match’ unemployed workers with new employers, the Department of Health and Social Care has established and funded ‘regional partnerships’. Workers losing their jobs will be given contact details for the local partnership, and trusted care sector employers will be also made aware of them.

However, a submission to the Committee from the Work Rights Centre suggested that the policy change “is not going to make any material difference”. The Government itself acknowledges that the change “will not entirely solve the challenges facing displaced care workers” and that there are barriers to the operation of the matching scheme. It is also concerning that the Government appears to have no accurate figure for the number of people in the pool.

The report draws the Statement of Changes to the special attention of the House on the ground that that it is politically or legally important or gives rise to issues of public policy likely to be of interest to the House.

Lord Watson of Invergowrie, Chair of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, said:

“Exploitation of care workers has led to a significant pool of migrants living in adverse circumstances, perhaps even experiencing homelessness and destitution. The regional partnerships have so far had limited success in helping them find new employers; even the Government says the performance of the partnerships is “disappointing”. Furthermore, it is worrying that the Government does not seem to have accurate data on the numbers of people affected.

This policy is intended to give the partnership system a boost and, if it does, that would be welcome. However, the Home Office acknowledges that this “will not entirely solve” the problem. The Home Office has said, without providing further details, that it is continuing to explore further ways of supporting those in the pool. The Government should set out what it is doing to understand better the scale of the problem, and what other measures it is considering, or taking, to increase the number of care workers being assisted into new employment.”