Officials do not fully understand UK skilled worker visa, watchdog says

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UK government officials do not fully understand how the main route for workers to come to Britain is being used or what it is contributing to the economy, according to the independent public spending watchdog. 

The Home Office did not conduct an impact assessment before widening the skilled worker visa route to include entry-level care jobs in 2022, the National Audit Office said in a report published on Monday. 

The decision was one of the key factors driving a surge in net immigration to the UK, with health and care accounting for 158,300 of 509,100 applications for skilled worker visas in 2023. 

High take-up of the route, which opened in 2020 when Brexit ended free movement with the EU, has helped businesses recruit and boosted tax revenues.

It has also led to more people staying permanently in the UK, more workers bringing family and more than 5,000 people who came on skilled worker visas applying for asylum in 2024.  

But nor did the Home Office, which leads government immigration policy, fully assess the consequences for different sectors before tightening the rules again in spring 2024, introducing a ban on care workers bringing family and higher salary thresholds for other skilled workers. 

The Whitehall department “does not fully understand how the route is being used, its contribution to the economy, or impacts on skills shortages across different sectors and regions”, the NAO said, adding that it failed to monitor what happened to people when their visa expired. 

The watchdog’s report comes as ministers prepare to publish a white paper setting out plans to cut work-related immigration further over time, by linking use of the visa system to efforts to train and recruit UK-born youngsters.

However, any sudden clampdown on numbers is likely to be fiercely contested by businesses in sectors that struggle to recruit. 

As well as confirming the intention to cut overall immigration, government ministers have pledged to ensure high-tech sectors seen as crucial to economic growth will be able to recruit skilled workers from overseas.

Since the rules were tightened last year, applications for skilled worker visas have already halved, totalling just 252,700 in 2024.

The drop was mostly in care — a sector still suffering chronic staff shortages — but the NAO said higher salary thresholds were also pricing out public sector vets, butchers working in abattoirs and architects, among other professions. 

The rule changes are not the only reason the number of skilled workers has fallen so sharply since 2023. The Home Office is also scrutinising applications more closely, revoking the licence to sponsor visas of almost 1,500 employers in 2024, and rejecting a fifth of applications in 2024. By contrast, in 2021 it approved 99 per cent. 

An estimated 34,000 care workers were affected by the revocations of employers’ licences, leaving them without work and at risk of deportation, unless they find a new sponsor. 

However, the NAO said the Home Office still had limited data on the extent to which employers were exploiting workers or abusing visa rules — partly because it was not working closely enough with HM Revenue & Customs, the tax agency, or the Department of Health and Social Care. 

The Home Office generated about £438mn in visa fees from skilled workers in 2023-24, well ahead of the £109mn cost of running the system, according to NAO estimates. 

The watchdog said the department should work with the government’s Migration Advisory Committee, as well as with the bodies overseeing skills, industrial strategy and labour market policy, so that future rule changes would be better informed. 

The MAC, the resources of which were bolstered under recent changes, is already set to publish an evaluation of the skilled worker route later this year.

The Home Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.