New data revealing a sixfold rise in long-term visas for care workers has prompted renewed calls for the scrapping of the policy.

Analysis by Sky News revealed there were 77,000 long-term work visas granted to care workers in the year to June, accounting for two-thirds of 120,300 health and care visas.

Health and care visas accounted for two in five of the 189,000 skills work visas granted in the year to June.

Senior care workers were added to the shortage occupation list in 2021 with care workers added in February 2022.

India leads the way in terms of health and care visas (30,000), followed by Nigeria (18,000) and Zimbabwe (17,000).

Speaking last month, chair of the Migration Advisory Committee, Professor Brian Bell, said the UK had adopted a deliberate policy of exploiting low-paid overseas workers to prop up the social care system.

Earlier this summer the New Conservatives group of Tory MPs calls for the scrapping of social care visas to help curb immigration.

Tory MP Jonathan Gullis repeated the call following publication of the latest figures, commenting: “We’ve called for a closure of this route because… there are 30,000 BTech students in health and social care, over a million unemployed and 700,00 on sickness benefits keen to get back to work.

“We believe you can train on the job in this sector and it’s up to businesses as well to invest – be that wages, to improved terms and conditions, to make this a more attractive industry.”

Sam Monaghan, chief executive of Methodist Homes (MHA), said scrapping overseas visas would have disastrous consequences with 152,000 vacancies in social care.

“Without overseas recruitment, vacancies will continue to be unfilled, the quality of care and support for vulnerable people would suffer and care homes may well have to once again close their doors to new residents,” Monaghan said. “This then has the knock on effect on the NHS as fewer places would be available for hospitals to discharge people to.”

The care leader called for greater social care funding so that providers can pay workers more along with a social care workforce plan.

Meanwhile, the rise in numbers of overseas care workers has seen growing incidents of modern slavery cases.

UNISON head of social care Gavin Edwards told Sky News that reports of vulnerable staff being exploited are “rife and growing”.

He said: “Care workers are frequently trapped in inadequate housing, paid rock-bottom wages for excessive hours and locked into unfair contracts. Many have paid colossal fees to take jobs in the UK.

“They may be unable to leave a location even when they’re not on shift or told to pay back huge sums to the company when they raise concerns about their working conditions or service quality. Sometimes this is backed with threats of deportation.”