Disabled People: Personal Assistants Debate
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Baroness Thomas of Winchester
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Disabled People: Personal Assistants
Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD) [V]
My Lords, the Minister has partly replied, but can he say a bit more about Home Office bureaucracy which is holding up the recruitment of care workers from overseas?
Lord Kamall (Con)
One issue that I think noble Lords across the House agree on is a suggestion made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. If we want to make sure that we have the right number of workers, we should improve training over here, but there will clearly be a skills gap in this country and therefore we need to look overseas. Sadly, as I said earlier, under the Home Office rules at the moment, individual employers do not count as sponsors. Officials in the department are having conversations with DWP to look at whether that can be rectified, or whether there is a way to find a trusted sponsor.