Adults accompanying foreign workers to the UK will be expected to pass an English language test and care homes will be prevented from recruiting staff from abroad as part of a swathe of new measures to be revealed by Keir Starmer to “tighten up” the immigration system.
Amid a recent surge in support for Reform UK, the prime minister will say on Monday that overseas arrivals should commit “to learning our language” and will promise to overhaul a “broken system” that encourages businesses to “bring in lower-paid workers”.
The government will also end the right of foreign workers to automatically apply for settlement in the UK after five years, instead extending their wait to a 10-year requirement, the prime minister will say
The announcements are part of Labour’s long-awaited white paper on immigration to be put before parliament on Monday, and follow the electoral success of Nigel Farage’s party in the local elections this month.
Also included will be plans to deport more foreign criminals, tell employers they must train UK staff and requirements that skilled workers entering Britain have a degree.
Net migration, the difference between the number of people moving to the UK and the number leaving, stood at 728,000 in the 12 months to June 2024. Under the last Conservative government, the figure surged to more than 900,000.
“Every area of the immigration system, including work, family and study, will be tightened up so we have more control,” the prime minister is expected to say on Monday.
In language more closely associated with populist parties, Starmer will say the white paper “will ensure settlement in this country is a privilege that must be earned, not a right.
“And when people come to our country, they should also commit to integration and to learning our language.”
Every adult accompanying a worker into the UK will be expected to pass an online English Level A1 test, which demands understanding of everyday expressions, and seeks questions and answers on simple personal details such as where he or she lives.
If workers apply for an extension to a visa, their dependants will be expected to pass the more advanced English A2 test. If they apply for settlement, they will be expected to pass a B2 exam, which requires them to understand “complex text on both concrete and abstract topics” and “interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity”.
English language requirements across every immigration route will be raised at some point in the future, sources said, which could force people who arrive in the UK from war zones to be tested on language skills before being granted permission to enter the UK.
Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, said on Sunday that the care worker visa would be closed for overseas recruitment under proposals in the white paper.
Asked by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg where care homes would recruit staff from, Cooper said companies should recruit from a pool of people who came as care workers in good faith but had been “exploited” by unscrupulous employers.
“Care companies should be recruiting from those workers. They can also extend existing visas. They could recruit as well from people who are on other visas, who are already here. But we do think it’s time to end that care worker recruitment from abroad,” she said.
Cooper declined to set a specific target for net migration, but said ministers believed changes to certain visas could result in “up to 50,000 fewer lower-skilled visas” over the next year.
At present, foreign criminals are only reported to the Home Office if they receive a jail sentence and only those given a year behind bars are usually considered for deportation.
Under new arrangements, the Home Office will be informed of all foreign nationals convicted of offences – not just those who receive prison sentences – and will be able to use wider removal powers on other crimes, including swifter action to remove people who have recently arrived in the country but already committed crimes.
The Home Office will also introduce rules so that any foreign national placed on the sex offender register, regardless of sentence length, will be classed as having committed a “serious crime” with no right to asylum protections in the UK.
Other proposals are expected to include new rules so that companies that repeatedly fail to show efforts to recruit UK-based staff, rather than recruit from abroad, could lose their right to sponsor foreign workers. Sectors targeted by the government include engineering and IT.
It is expected that work visas will be strictly time-limited for most jobs that do not need graduate-level skills.
Foreign students who have studied for degrees in the UK will face tighter rules over their right to remain after finishing university.
Ministers also plan to introduce a Labour Market Evidence Group, made up of officials from industry and skills bodies, as well as from the government and the Migration Advisory Council. It would, the Home Office said, “inform understanding of where sectors are overly reliant on overseas labour and reverse underinvestment in domestic skills”.
As well as winning control of 10 councils on 1 May, Reform UK, which is promising an effective freeze on most migration, is topping most polls of national voter preference.
Reacting to the proposals, Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “It’s right that ministers look to address concern over immigration but the public wants principled competence rather than populist performance.”
Care England, which represents care homes, has labelled the changes to care visas a “crushing blow to an already fragile sector”, while Unison has linked “hostile language” to a “fall off a cliff” for applications for care visas.
Martin Green, Care England’s chief executive accused the government of “kicking us while we’re already down”.
“For years, the sector has been propping itself up with dwindling resources, rising costs and mounting vacancies,” he said.“International recruitment wasn’t a silver bullet, but it was a lifeline. Taking it away now, with no warning, no funding, and no alternative, is not just shortsighted – it’s cruel.”
Christina McAnea, general secretary of the Unison union, said that the “NHS and the care sector would have collapsed long ago without the thousands of workers who’ve come to the UK from overseas”.
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