Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of limiting sponsored workers to 20 hours of secondary employment on migrant workers; and if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of permitting additional regulated employment to support those workers to meet living costs.

The salary rules we have in place on many sponsored work routes are designed to ensure workers are paid enough from their primary sponsored employment to be able to support themselves without needing to take second jobs.

The rules are designed to strike a balance between allowing sponsored workers to take on additional work if they wish, while ensuring the main purpose of their stay in the UK remains the primary sponsored work for which their visas were issued.

As well as working their contracted hours sponsored workers can work overtime with their sponsoring employer and can apply to work any number of hours in secondary employment with another licensed sponsor. This arrangement does not count as supplementary employment, therefore they can work as many hours as they agree with their employer, subject to working time regulations.

Further people can also undertake up to 20 hours supplementary employment. This was expanded in Spring 2024 to allow people in the Skilled Worker route to do supplementary employment in any eligible occupation instead of it having to be the same occupation or a job on the Shortage Occupation List as used to be the case.