Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of extending visas for health and social care workers for the duration of the covid-19 pandemic.

The UK Government recognises the vital contribution overseas NHS, health and social care workers have and continue to make in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier in the year we offered free visa extensions for key, frontline health professionals whose visas were due to expire between 31 March 2020 and 1 October 2020.

On 20 November, we announced we will renew this offer for those eligible health professionals and their family dependants whose visas expire between 1 October 2020 until 31 March 2021.

More details of this announcement can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/thousands-more-health-workers-to-benefit-from-visa-extensions

We will keep the free extension offer under review to ensure we continue supporting the health and care sector in tackling this pandemic.