Keir Starmer is right to scrap the care worker visa

Monday’s immigration white paper might just be the defining moment of Starmer’s premiership so far — a bold, calculated play that sets the tone for the next election. It’s a document dripping with electoral intent. And yet, for all the fanfare, I don’t believe it will save Labour from what’s coming. A global economic crisis is brewing. Illegal migration is spiralling. No amount of technocratic tinkering with legal routes will offset the political reckoning that lies ahead.

Putting that aside, what did Monday’s white paper actually offer? The measures themselves are hardly revolutionary — but they’re crafted with the voter in mind. Tougher English language requirements. Limits on how long foreign grads can hang around without a skilled job. Digital ID for overseas students. A quango-led model linking visa numbers to “upskilling” plans.

Will any of this move the needle? I’m sceptical. These policies might grab headlines, but I doubt they’ll meaningfully cut net migration in the short-term. The real tightening, I suspect, will come from James Cleverly’s eleventh-hour reforms in the dying days of the last Tory government — particularly the salary threshold hike and the crackdown on dependent visas. These were the pressure valves Boris Johnson left wide open, and they helped unleash the great “Boriswave”.

Where the real pivot lies, though, is in the messaging. Starmer now sounds strikingly close to Nigel Farage — or at the very least, like someone who’s been taking notes from The Mail on Sunday. Britain, he warned, risks becoming an “island of strangers.” That’s a powerful way to capture the fragmented future we’re heading toward. Most tellingly, he pushed back against what might be called the infinity migration mindset — the belief, still alive in corners of Whitehall, that ever-higher immigration equals ever-higher growth, like pouring fuel into a car engine. But as Peter Lilley pointed out years ago, immigration isn’t fuel, it’s a lubricant. It can grease the wheels of the economy, but it won’t drive the vehicle on its own.

It’ll drive wages up and force care home providers to rethink their Dickensian labour mode

Nowhere is that shift in thinking clearer than in Labour’s boldest move yet: a full ban on foreign care workers. While they danced delicately around other visa routes and loopholes, here they didn’t flinch. On care work, they went for the jugular. And it shows — because this is the policy that’s caused the most wailing and gnashing of teeth among the pro-immigration commentariat. A smaller crowd than it once was, granted, but still loud and still perched on some pretty influential platforms.

I’ll be honest — I didn’t see this coming. I didn’t think Starmer or Cooper had the stones to do it. But credit where it’s due: they’ve proved me wrong. And I’m glad they did. 

For one thing, it’ll drive wages up and force care home providers to rethink their Dickensian labour model. Migrants from low-income countries often accept poorly paid jobs in miserable, thankless conditions — not because they’re irrational, but because their benchmark is life back home. For them, even low-paid drudgery in Britain feels like a step up. Cut off the flow, and care homes will have no choice but to offer better pay and working conditions to recruit new staff and stop other British nationals from jumping ship. Right now, most Brits see care work as a thankless, underpaid slog — a last resort rather than a viable career. Some won’t apply at all; others treat it as a temporary fix during hard times.

Critics will say, not unfairly, that bumping up wages will drive inflation. But in the long run, it might actually cut costs and lift standards. Why? Because it would slow the care sector’s catastrophic staff turnover, which is currently around 30 per cent a year. That’s not just bad — it’s a recipe for collapse. High churn in the workforce means constant recruitment and retraining — a drain on time, money and morale. It wrecks continuity of care, it hollows out institutional knowledge, and it leaves remaining staff overstretched, burned out, and eyeing the exit. The result? A nasty positive feedback loop — where every loss makes things worse, and every new hire is less likely to stay. You never build momentum. You just keep spinning the wheel.

Then there’s the other, darker side of the care worker visa. It’s rife with corruption and illegality. A blistering inspection report by David Neal, released in March 2024, exposed the systemic failures in how the Home Office grants these visas. Among the damning findings: 275 certificates of sponsorship granted to a care home without its knowledge, underpinned by “false information”. Neal also highlighted the mismatch between the Home Office’s undersized compliance team and the ever-expanding register of licensed sponsors.

Labour’s policy, then, is more than just practical; it’s the right, humane, and responsible thing to do

Eleanor Lyons, the anti-slavery commissioner, didn’t mince words either, calling the care worker visa route a source of “really severe” exploitation, including instances of modern slavery. Migrants from countries like India, Zimbabwe, and the Philippines were deceived into paying illegal recruitment fees, and in some cases, found themselves in situations resembling debt bondage, with their wages and passports held hostage.

Labour’s policy, then, is more than just practical; it’s the right, humane, and responsible thing to do. And this becomes even more pressing when we consider the communication barriers many foreign care workers face. Often speaking broken or substandard English, some migrant carers struggle to properly communicate with elderly residents or respond effectively in emergencies. Take the tragic case of Barbara Rymell, an elderly woman with dementia who died after becoming trapped under a stair lift. Her care staff were unable to relay the situation to emergency services, because their English wasn’t sufficient to explain what had happened.

Of course, there’s a serious objection to the care visa crackdown — and it’s not wrong. Many care home operators are dysfunctional, debt-laden outfits that can barely stay afloat. If Labour’s ban pushes costs higher or forces care homes to close, the ripple effects across the NHS and wider health sector could be catastrophic. 

The core problem is simple: local authority contracts aren’t lucrative, and bigger operations often struggle with inefficiencies. The care home market is now sharply divided – on one side, profitable self-pay homes clustered in wealthier parts of the southeast; on the other, council-funded homes barely scraping by. In fact, the average fee rate paid by local authorities in England is now below the floor of its modelled “fair price” band. That’s why these homes are so dependent on migrant workers — not because foreigners are better at the job, or because Brits are lazy, but because migrants from less affluent countries will accept low pay and grotty conditions. They’re plugging gaps in a broken system.

In the short term, the Treasury will have to step in with more grant funding. There’s no way around it. But this is, in my view, a worthwhile investment. Not just for the reasons already laid out – lower churn, better continuity of care, fewer horror stories – but because it could also chip away at our spiralling welfare bill. It’s a bitter truth, but plenty of working-age Brits are opting out of the workforce because long hours for low pay just isn’t worth the grind. When work feels pointless, people check out. But shut off the immigration tap, push wages up, and that equation begins to change. 

And then there’s the housing market. Curbing immigration means slower population growth – and that takes the heat off Britain’s bloated property sector. Right now, young people are sinking most of their income into eye-watering rents, especially in London and the southeast of England. The result? Less spending power, and a generation locked out of home ownership. As I’ve argued before, mass immigration doesn’t grow the economy — it just reshuffles who wins. And in this case, renters get squeezed while landlords rake it in. That’s why drawing from the domestic labour market – especially the economically inactive – makes far more sense than handing out care visas like confetti. Clamping down on the health care visa route will also take some of the strain off public infrastructure and overstretched services.

For the last 30 years, governments have churned out green papers, white papers, inquiries, and reviews on social care – eight green papers, four white papers, and two official inquiries, to be exact. Yet, no one has had the guts to deliver the kind of reform this sector desperately needs. Scrapping the care worker visa is a welcome first step because care home providers must step up when it comes to fair pay and working conditions, rather than relying on low-paid, indentured labour from overseas. They need to turn this hard, gruelling job into one people can live on — and take pride in.

But to make this work, councils need proper funding — and that has to come from central government. Labour can’t afford to dodge this challenge or kick the can further down the road. They need to face it head-on and finally deliver the long-term investment the sector has been crying out for. Some will say this means higher taxes, but that’s not inevitable. As Labour recently showed by slashing the foreign aid budget to fund defence, it’s entirely possible to rein in spending on less essential items and redirect the money where it really matters. That same boldness is now needed again.