Care England chief executive Martin Green says the way in which local authorities commission care makes them “complicit with modern slavery”. Multiple sources on and off the record say tens of thousands of international care workers are stranded in the UK.

Caring Times hears from multiple sources that home care companies desperate to receive unrealistic hours for their international workers have been underbidding councils leading to a collapse in local markets. Sham companies have also been charging international workers thousands to come to the UK, only for there to be very little or no work at all.

Tim Wilson, board director of the Homecare Association and Surrey Care Association, says: “We are deemed ‘expensive’ and ‘slow to respond’ when, in reality, we are simply employing people lawfully, paying proper salaries, and operating within employment rights constraints. We have no competitive answer to fraud and modern-day slavery. Unethical providers currently have the run on the market as they are cheap, meaning they are awarded the most packages of care, with a workforce who can’t say no.

“Migrant workers are being forced to work 15-hour days while only being paid for the time they spend delivering care—often earning just 7 to 10 hours pay. Desperate for hours to survive, these workers should be protected by a salary, yet they sacrifice their human and professional dignity for the promise of indefinite leave to remain at the end of their visa period. Local authorities are the primary beneficiaries of the low rates that exploitation and fraud enable.

“Meanwhile, the CQC has in my view lost its ability to inspect effectively since Covid, and HMRC fails to enforce the National Minimum Wage and UKVI fail to enforce salary conditions at a level that makes a meaningful difference.”

Although the Government has tried to clamp down on this, statistics may suggest the policy has been inefficient in filling vacancies. Despite 90,000 international workers coming to the UK between 2021 and 2023, vacancies have only reduced by 33,000 according to charity Skills for Care. The most recent figures suggest the vacancy rate still sits at 8.3%, compared with 10.6% in 2021/22.

Jonathan Raphael, co-founder and CTO at Borderless, which helps care providers sponsor international workers, says: “Some of the vacancy rate is due to retention issues. More British nationals are leaving the sector, and sponsored workers don’t necessarily stay in care. While they may come over on a care visa, they could then move to the NHS or other sectors.

“I definitely think that sponsorship and international recruitment have helped bring the number of vacancies down, however the Government doesn’t seem to have numbers around how many people were brought over for real jobs versus to make someone quick money. And it’s very common for someone in the care sector to say people are coming to their doors day-in day-out begging for work after being sponsored by a sham company or by one without enough hours.”

Raphael says this may get worse with the double-whammy cost increase of national insurance and national living wage rises. This cost increase will cause a lot of home care businesses to close, meaning sponsored workers will be stranded without a job. One of Raphael’s colleagues points out that any sponsored workers at these companies could face deportation.

As a result of the problem, the previous administration implemented measures which stem the flow of international workers. This has resulted in a 20% decrease in immigration YoY, and it seems Labour is content with this.

However, Raphael explains they also make it more difficult for care companies with genuine vacancies: “The Government now demands care providers to demonstrate a deficit of weekly working hours in order to sponsor a full-time employee, but home care doesn’t work with local authorities on a block contract basis. There is also a lot of documentation needed, and care companies are having applications rejected, unless they provide particular documentation that they don’t have.

“They have also stopped care workers from bringing over dependents. This is partially politically motivated, in order to get net migration down. Their hope is young people will come over and leave after a few years. In reality, workers come over with their partners who are sponsored on another visa. If they have children or their partners can’t get a visa, they don’t come.”

The Government is also hesitant to uphold these laws. Martin Green says: “The Home Office are turning a blind eye to the trafficking element of this. They’re regranting licences when they get a legal challenge because they don’t want the problem.

“When care costs £23 an hour and you’re commissioning it for £18.52 an hour you’re forcing care providers to act in a certain way, so they are complicit in modern slavery. And there is a huge human tragedy here: some care workers have been told they have to pay for accommodation with sex, some are only being paid between £1.80 and £5 an hour, and they will not protest because some of the agencies who brought them over are associated with people back home who will turn up at their families door if they do.”

Wilson says even the seemingly small fry laws need to be upheld: “I support enforcement against administrative infringements, as this is sometimes the only action that sticks. When a regulated provider caring for an elderly person with dementia is penalised for what appears to be bureaucratic and low-level infractions, we should not attack the system outright. Instead, we should be concerned that companies are either failing on the basics or that these ‘basics’ are being leveraged to avoid tackling far more serious but harder-to-prove abuses.”

Meanwhile councils are still not increasing care fees in line with the cost pressures. Stoke-on-Trent attempted to implement a 1.4% fee increase, compared to an estimated 10%+ increase in costs. The High Court deemed this unlawful.

One Nigeria-born care worker and victim spoke to Caring Times about his experience. He now works for a company separate from the one who sponsored him however, his original sponsors charged him to come to the UK via the care worker visa route and then had no work for him. His identity has been anonymised, as the care company in question is still operating.

He says: “The people who introduced the scheme to me insisted that I had to pay for a certificate of sponsorship from an employer. They called it a service charge. So I paid, and I got one. The people issuing the certificate never actually met me.

“After I came to the UK, I was supposed to complete my training and then do shadowing and start working immediately. But I moved to the city where the company was, renting a house, and they had no work for me. I had to find a second employer just so I could make ends meet.

“It was only when the news came out that the Home Office was going to clamp down on complicit companies that that they said I needed to come in and do shadowing. It was May, so I had already been in the UK for three months by that point. And then I heard nothing again from them until November, when I had already switched my sponsorship over.”

Caring Times understands from multiple expert sources that this worker’s story is an all too common one.