Certificate of Common Sponsorship

Neil Duncan-Jordan Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential merits of Government support for a certificate of common sponsorship.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. Before I start, I pay tribute to Unison South West, which has been at the forefront of this campaign. It has a number of care workers and members in the Gallery to listen to the debate.

The stark reality for migrant workers in the UK is that they are under-protected by our employment rights framework and victimised by our immigration rules. Migrant social care workers are particularly vulnerable to this kind of ill treatment because of the hostile environment in which they find themselves. Any worker who challenges bad practices by their employer puts their ability to live and work in the UK at great risk. This is a real danger in a sector with high levels of staff turnover. It is fragmented and privatised, characterised by many small employers running on tight profit margins—some of the profits are extracted from the companies for shareholder dividends. This important debate therefore draws attention to the power that employers are given by our visa system.

As the visa sponsor, employers have ultimate power over the lives of workers. Unscrupulous employers have greater powers over migrant care workers, because their work visa is tied to their employment status. If they lose their job, they will lose the right to work and live in the UK. The only way to avoid that currently is if they can find another job with an eligible social care employer within 60 days. As migrant workers, they are not eligible for any kind of support if they are dismissed. Many employers are well aware of the fear and vulnerability that these workers experience and do not hesitate to use threats to secure their compliance.

The sponsorship relationship with the employer is particularly harmful in the social care sector. As many Members will know, the care sector is one of the most precarious sectors in the UK. Firms regularly go under or lose their council contracts. The consequence is that staff find themselves without work and in financial hardship. For migrant care workers, the situation is even worse. Workers are fearful of raising concerns about employment practices, because they know that the same employers can remove their visa sponsorship. Unscrupulous employers can use the threat of removal to a care worker’s home country to victimise migrant workers who whistleblow or complain about their treatment.

Workers do not only risk deportation by speaking up or challenging an employer. Many face total financial ruin in their home country, because they have sold all that they have to come here, and illegal recruitment fees demanded by predatory recruitment agencies are rife in the sector. According to the Work Rights Centre, one in three people on the health and care worker visa said that they had to pay a large recruitment fee to secure their sponsorship. The value of fees averaged £11,000. The latest report from the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority indicates that the care sector is the most reported sector for labour exploitation, making up 60% of all reports. The most common vulnerability to exploitation indicated by potential victims of forced labour is being tied to a visa under the existing sponsorship system.

The Care Quality Commission has noted that workers are being exploited through the immigration system. Research last year by the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre found that the current visa system creates hyper-insecurity, which increases workers’ vulnerability to exploitation. Workers routinely suffer low wages, high recruitment fees, inappropriate salary deductions and the threat of deportation.

One care worker, who wishes to remain nameless, said:

“We are not treated with dignity at all. Last month I was paid just £1,300 with no explanation as to why my wages had been reduced. Most carers are scared to take their leave for fear of losing shifts and when you get sick, the company deducts money from your salary”.

One of my constituents in Poole, Nicola, explained that many sponsors have failed to meet their promises of providing adequate hours, which leaves workers in precarious situations. This not only undermines their rights, but often subjects them to poor working conditions and substandard housing.

Some of the stories these workers tell are truly heartbreaking and highlight clear violations of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. For example, many migrant healthcare workers are expected to sign contracts containing draconian clauses which often include a requirement to pay back recruitment and training costs if they leave their posts within a few years. Workers have effectively been blackmailed into staying because their employers have threatened them with a large debt should they leave. Migrant care staff have also been invoiced for administration costs. One employer billed staff £65 an hour for meeting and greeting a new employee at the airport when they arrived in the UK. Another worrying trend is workers being charged fees that the Home Office explicitly forbid employers to pass on. These include the immigration skills charge that the Government require employers to pay when they agree to sponsor a worker from overseas.

Government interventions to address these issues have failed thus far. In 2023, the then Government announced that care providers could only sponsor migrant workers if they were undertaking activities regulated by the CQC, but this failed to recognise that many registered companies were already exploiting their workers. In 2024, a rematching programme to help workers find another sponsored role when things went wrong was symbolic of acting after the problem had arisen, rather than seeking to change the structure of the system.

Although welcome, stricter licensing requirements and greater sanctions do not address the fundamental power imbalance at the heart of the employee sponsorship system. That is why I hope the Government will agree to a review of immigration policies that increase the vulnerability of migrant workers to exploitation and modern slavery. Vital to that is a re-examination of the visa sponsorship relationship with the employer in the social care sector, moving towards a sector-wide sponsorship scheme run by an independent body with a health and social care focus. That would enable overseas staff to leave bad employers and find work with better ones.

Sector-wide sponsorship would also mean that workers and employers did not incur new costs every time a worker moved jobs. That would alleviate the pressure on the worker and reduce the impetus from some employers to enforce repayment clauses. Any visa scheme reform will stand or fall on whether it enables overseas workers to live their lives free of exploitation. This requires a fundamental shift in our immigration rules, so that the hostile environment is replaced with a rights-based framework and migrant workers are treated with dignity and respect.

[Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the appalling situations faced by migrant labour in the social care system, as highlighted by UNISON, emphasise the need for urgent structural reform of the system, to create a national care service that resolves workforce insecurity, alongside the many other problems arising from our social care crisis?

[Neil Duncan-Jordan]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The need for urgent social care reform—and to bring it back into public ownership—is vital, and I will continue to press the Government on this.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Ind)]

I can see that the hon. Member is on his last paragraph. I apologise to him, and to you, Dr Huq—I am chairing a meeting next door, so I will have to leave. I intervene because he mentioned companies going out of business. In my constituency, when Southern Cross went out of business, a range of Filipino workers were left bereft, isolated, and with no income, and had to return home because of the visa situation. The Government’s Employment Rights Bill, which is coming before the House, proposes a fair pay agreement in the social care sector—which will be the first element of the reintroduction of sectoral collective pay bargaining—and proposes a fair work agency. That agency could take on the role of monitoring this sector and administer an overall sectoral visa process that could be fairer and regulated.

[Neil Duncan-Jordan]

I thank the right hon. Member for that intervention. We need to consider how to address this problem in a practical way, and that might be one option.

Introducing a common certificate of sponsorship is not only the right thing to do; it is absolutely crucial to raising standards in the care sector. Overseas workers play a vital role in keeping the sector running. They deserve better protections and treatment, and I hope that the Government will therefore see the merit of introducing a certificate of common sponsorship.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Duncan-Jordan]

I thank all Members for their contributions to today’s debate, which was very positive. I also welcome the Minister’s contribution, and acknowledge both her understanding of the exploitation taking place in the sector today and her willingness to address that through existing and future measures.

On regional support hubs, however, the evidence we have heard—that only 5% of people losing their sponsorship are able to gain another role within the 60-day period—is proof enough that the system is not yet working adequately. I acknowledge that there are efforts to be made, but that does not address the problem that migrant workers face. They are in vulnerable positions and precarious employment, and when that is threatened and taken away, it is very difficult to find another sponsor. I would like the Minister to take that on board further.

Finally, my view is that strong trade unions are the key to exercising rights at work. Migrants should be represented in a union in their workplace. We also need a sympathetic legal underpinning that helps individuals and workers generally to exercise those rights. I am hoping that the Employment Rights Bill and other proposed legislation will do that. I am hopeful, ultimately, that the Government will see the economic and social benefit of introducing a certificate of common sponsorship.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the potential merits of Government support for a certificate of common sponsorship.