Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the recommendations of the Thirty-Seventh Report of the Committee of Public Accounts of Session 2024-25 on Immigration: Skilled worker visas, HC 819 and pursuant to the Answer of 2 April 2025 to Question 39615 on Care Workers: Migrant Workers, what steps he is taking to expedite publication of an evaluation of the effectiveness of regional partnerships to support (a) displaced and (b) exploited care workers into new employment.

The Government welcomes the Committee of Public Accounts’ report on skilled worker visas and will respond fully in due course.

The Department is providing up to £12.5 million this financial year to 15 regional partnerships to help support international care workers affected by sponsor non-compliance into alternative, ethical employment.

We have commissioned the National Institute for Health and Care Research’s Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce to undertake an independent evaluation of the 2024/25 international recruitment regional fund. We currently expect the final report of this evaluation to be published by King's College London in January 2026.

Regional partnerships provide the Department with monthly and quarterly monitoring data regarding progress, including on the number of displaced workers who have secured new sponsored employment.