Lord Ouseley – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Ouseley on 2015-11-18.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they are giving to relaxing visa restrictions for those seeking to come to Britain as carers in order tackle nursing and care home staffing shortages.

Lord Bates

Tier 2 of the Points Based System for immigration – the skilled work route – has been reserved for graduate occupations since 2011. Carers do not qualify for entry to the UK under this route and sponsors are therefore unable to bring in workers from outside the EEA to fill such roles.

While the Government acknowledges that care work requires certain skills, it should be possible to source those skills from the resident workforce. The care sector, like others, needs to reduce its dependency on migration and develop a sustainable strategy for tackling high vacancy and turnover rates by doing more to attract, train and retain resident workers.