There has been a 76% fall in the number of foreign health and care workers applying for UK work visas, new figures revealed this week, leading to fresh fears over the future of services.
Compared with the same period in 2023, between January and April 2024 the number of applications for the route dropped by more than three-quarters, with 12,400 applications made against 50,900 last year. While ministers have hailed the figures as proof that its efforts to cut record net migration have succeeded, health and immigration experts have warned they are a threat to services and economic growth.
Overall, net migration to the UK fell 10% to 685,000 in 2023 after hitting a record high in 2022, according to Office for National Statistics figures.
The ONS said it was “too early to say if this is the start of a new downward trend”.
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However, the number of skilled worker visas were up 41%, from 20,700 to 29,200 in the first four months of this year compared with the same period in 2023. The number of dependants were up 62% to 26,300 from 16,200. This increase was the result of a rush to obtain visas before the salary threshold was increased in April from £26,200 to £38,700, according to experts.
Overall, the number of foreign people moving to the UK for work and study has fallen by 25%, as the government’s policy of increasing visa costs and salary thresholds to bring down legal immigration are taking effect.
The government has hailed the impact of its measures to tighten student visas, which came into force in January, stating there were 79% fewer student dependant applications in the first four months of 2024. The Home Office website stated: “Students can also no longer switch their visa before completing their course, preventing people using the route as a backdoor to work in the UK, while clamping down on institutions which undermine the UK’s reputation by selling immigration not education.”
There were more than 30,000 fewer student visa applications made between January to April 2024 compared with the same period in 2023.
The combined total of skilled worker, study and health and care visas – the three largest groups of visa applicants – issued fell from 235,400 to 175,500 in the first four months of this year compared to the same period last year.
The home secretary, James Cleverly, said: “The plan to deliver the largest-ever cut to legal migration in our country’s history is working. This monthly data is the most up-to-date picture of visa levels, showing that on current trajectories legal migration continues to fall across key routes.”
London mayor Sadiq Khan said the fall in health visas would place an “already-stretched” NHS and social care system under even more pressure.
Immigration expert Jonathan Portes, professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London, said the sharp fall in health and care visas was “likely due not just to the restrictions on dependents but also a more restrictive approach to granting sponsor licenses after some well-publicised cases of abuse and exploitation.”
He told the UK in a Changing Europe website that social care was already struggling with workforce pressures and years of underfunding. “Over the last two years, only a very large influx of migrant workers – 70,000 new starters in the last year – has saved the sector from an even deeper crisis. If the fall in visas issued is sustained, and there is not a large infusion of taxpayer funds, prospects are bleak,” he said.
Portes added that since just before the pandemic, all job growth had been driven by immigration. He said: “While the number of UK-born workers has fallen over the last five years, the number born outside the EU has increased by well over a million. As well as health and social care, migrants coming on skilled work visas have driven job growth in the professional and scientific sector, while those arriving as dependents or students have filled vacancies in accommodation and hospitality.
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“With little sign that the post-pandemic increase in inactivity – largely due to sickness and disability – is going to reverse any time soon, it’s far from clear where any future labour force growth in any of these sectors will come from.”
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