UK to end international recruitment for care workers under new migration rules

Monday, May 12, 2025 - Care workers will no longer be recruited from abroad as part of a crackdown on visas to "significantly" bring down net migration, the UK home secretary, Yvette Cooper has said. 

Yvette Cooper told Sky News' Sunday Morning, May 11, with Trevor Phillips programme the government will close the care worker visa route as part of new restrictions which aim to cut the number of low-skilled foreign workers by about 50,000 this year. 

She said: "We're going to introduce new restrictions on lower-skilled workers, so new visa controls, because we think actually what we should be doing is concentrating on the higher-skilled migration and we should be concentrating on training in the UK.

"Also, we will be closing the care worker visa for overseas recruitment". 

The announcement was also made on the Gov.uk website. 

"Under plans to be outlined on Monday (12 May), the government will go further and put an end to any more overseas recruitment," the home office wrote. 

The move comes ahead of the Immigration White Paper to be laid out this week, which will give more details on the government's reforms.

Care England, a charity which represents independent care services, described Ms Cooper's comments as a "crushing blow to an already fragile sector" and said the government "is kicking us while we're already down".

Its chief executive Martin Green said international recruitment is a "lifeline" and there are "mounting vacancies" in the sector. 

It has also emerged that the government plans to assess for deportation any foreign criminals who commit any crimes in the UK. 

In a series of interviews on Sunday, Cooper said the government would not set a figure for net migration but would target recruitment in lower-skilled sectors.

Speaking to Sky News’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Cooper said: “We’re going to introduce new restrictions on lower-skilled workers, so new visa controls, because we think actually what we should be doing is concentrating on the higher-skilled migration and we should be concentrating on training in the UK. 

“New requirements to train here in the UK to make sure that the UK workforce benefits, and also we will be closing the care worker visa for overseas recruitment.” 

Asked by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg where care homes would recruit staff from, Cooper said companies should recruit from a pool of people who came as care workers in good faith but had been “exploited” by unscrupulous employers. 

“Care companies should be recruiting from those workers. They can also extend existing visas. They could recruit as well from people who are on other visas, who are already here. But we do think it’s time to end that care worker recruitment from abroad,” she said.