Home Office has no idea how many migrants overstayed

Millie Cooke, The Independent

The government has failed to gather basic information such as whether people leave the UK after their visas expire or how many might have stayed to work illegally, the chairman of a cross-party committee of MPs said. The Public Accounts Committee (Pac), which examines the value for money of government projects, said the Home Office had failed to analyse exit checks since the skilled worker visa route was introduced by the Tories in 2020. Some 1.18 million people applied to come to the UK on this route — designed to attract skilled workers in the wake of Brexit — between its launch in December of that year and the end of 2024.

Around 630,000 of those were dependents of the main visa applicant. But the Pac said there is both a lack of knowledge around what people do when their visas expire and that the expansion of the route in 2022 to attract staff for the struggling social care sector led to the exploitation of some migrant workers. Its report said there was "widespread evidence of workers suffering debt bondage, working excessive hours and exploitative conditions", but added there is "no reliable data on the extent of abuses". It noted that the fact that a person's right to remain in the UK is dependent on their employer under the sponsorship model means migrant workers are "vulnerable to exploitation". While the problems began under the previous Conservative government, the revelations will come as a major headache for Yvette Cooper, who is trying to persuade voters she can get a grip on illegal migration.

It comes just days after new figures showed that a record number of people have crossed the Channel in small boats in the first six months of this year, despite Sir Keir Starmer's pledge to "smash" the smuggling gangs. Provisional Home Office data showed that a total of 19,982 people have arrived in the UK since the start of 2025 — the highest total for the halfway point of the year since data was first collected on migrant crossings in 2018. Meanwhile, figures published earlier this year 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 The Home Office said more than 470 sponsor licences in the care sector had been revoked between July 2022 and December 2024 in a crackdown on abuse and exploitation.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. In its report, published on Friday, the Pac said: "The cross-government response to tackling the exploitation of migrant workers has been insufficient and, within this, the Home Office's response has been slow and ineffective." It also noted a lack of information around what happens to people when their visas expire, stating that the Home Office had said the only way it can tell if people are still in the country is to match its own data with airline passenger information.

The report said: "The Home Office has not analysed exit checks since the route was introduced and does not know what proportion of people return to their home country after their visa has expired, and how many may be working illegally in the United Kingdom." Committee chairman Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said while the former Tory government had "moved swiftly to open up the visa system to help the social care system cope during the pandemic", the speed and volume of applications "came at a painfully high cost - to the safety of workers from the depredations of labour market abuses, and the integrity of the system from people not following the rules".

He added: "There has long been mounting evidence of serious issues with the system, laid bare once again in our inquiry. "And yet basic information, such as how many people on skilled worker visas have been modern slavery victims, and whether people leave the UK after their visas expire, seems to still not have been gathered by the government." Earlier this week legislation to end the recruitment of care workers from abroad was introduced to parliament as part of a raft of immigration reforms. The move has sparked concerns from the adult social care sector, with the GMB union describing the decision as "potentially catastrophic" due to the reliance on migrant workers, with some 130,000 vacancies across England. The Home Office believes there are 40,000 potential members of staff originally brought over by "rogue" providers who could work in the sector while UK staff are trained up.

Sir Geoffrey warned that unless there is "effective cross-government working, there is a risk that these changes will exacerbate challenges for the care sector". He said the government must "develop a deeper understanding of the role that immigration plays in sector workforce strategies, as well as how domestic workforce plans will help address skills shortages", warning that it "no longer has the excuse of the global crisis caused by the pandemic if it operates this system on the fly, and without due care". Adis Sehic, policy manager at charity the Work Rights Centre, said the report "unequivocally finds that the sponsorship system is making migrant workers vulnerable to exploitation because it ties workers to employers" and that the Home Office had "simply relied on sponsors' goodwill to comply with immigration rules". He added: "This report is yet more damning evidence that the principle of sponsorship, which ties migrant workers in the UK to their employer, is inherently unsafe for workers and, in our view, breaches their human rights.