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Lord Allan of Hallam Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)]

My Lords, as the Minister has likely anticipated, 2024 is going to be a year when we keep hassling him for a long-term workforce plan for social care. Assuming he is not going to announce the imminent publication of one, can I at least ask him to commit to commissioning and publishing an independent report into the potential impact of the visa changes described by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley? The Government are of course entitled to make it harder to get visas, but they should be upfront and transparent about the downstream effects.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

The Home Office has made an impact assessment of that. It thinks it will impact about 20,000 staff; we recruited about 100,000 last year. The main thing is that, by making sure that only CQC-registered bodies are able to recruit in this way, we are trying to make sure it is done in the correct, ethical manner by high-quality providers, which I think we would all agree is the right approach.