Home Office has no idea how many migrants overstay their visas

Telegraph

04-07-2025

The Home Office does not know how many people are leaving the UK after their visas expire or how many are working illegally, a report by MPs has found.
The Government has failed to gather 'basic information' such as the proportion of people on working visas who had returned to their home country, according to the public accounts committee (PAC), which examines the value for money of government projects.
The committee found the Home Office had not analysed exit checks since the skilled worker visa route was introduced in 2020 under the Conservatives.
Some 1.18 million people applied to come to the UK on this route – to attract skilled workers after Brexit – between its launch in December of that year and the end of 2024. Around 630,000 of those were dependants of the main visa applicant.
The Home Office said it could only tell if a person was still in the country by matching its own data with airline passenger information, according to the PAC report, published on Friday.
The committee also raised concerns that the expansion of the skilled worker route in 2022 to attract staff for the struggling social care sector led to the exploitation of some migrant workers.
The report said there was 'widespread evidence of workers suffering debt bondage, working excessive hours and exploitative conditions', but adds there is 'no reliable data on the extent of abuses'.
The PAC highlighted that migrant workers are 'vulnerable to exploitation' because a person's right to remain is dependent on their employer under the sponsorship model.
The Home Office said more than 470 sponsor licences in the care sector had been revoked between July 2022 and December 2024 in a crackdown on abuse and exploitation. More than 39,000 workers were associated with those sponsors since October 2020.
The PAC said: 'The cross-government response to tackling the exploitation of migrant workers has been insufficient and, within this, the Home Office's response has been slow and ineffective.'
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the committee chairman, said that while the then-Tory government had 'moved swiftly to open up the visa system to help the social care system cope during the pandemic', the speed and volume of applications ' came at a painfully high cost – to the safety of workers from the depredations of labour market abuses, and the integrity of the system from people not following the rules'.
He added: 'There has long been mounting evidence of serious issues with the system, laid bare once again in our inquiry.
'And yet basic information, such as how many people on skilled worker visas have been modern slavery victims, and whether people leave the UK after their visas expire, seems to still not have been gathered by Government.'
Earlier this week, legislation to end the recruitment of care workers from abroad was introduced to Parliament as part of a raft of immigration reforms.
The move raised concerns from the adult social care sector, with the GMB union describing the decision as 'potentially catastrophic' because of the reliance on migrant workers and some 130,000 vacancies across England.
Sir Geoffrey warned that unless there is 'effective cross-government working, there is a risk that these changes will exacerbate challenges for the care sector'.
He said the Government must 'develop a deeper understanding of the role that immigration plays in sector workforce strategies, as well as how domestic workforce plans will help address skills shortages', warning that it 'no longer has the excuse of the global crisis caused by the pandemic if it operates this system on the fly, and without due care'.
Adis Sehic, a policy manager at the Work Rights Centre, said the report 'unequivocally finds that the sponsorship system is making migrant workers vulnerable to exploitation because it ties workers to employers' and that the Home Office had 'simply relied on sponsors' goodwill to comply with immigration rules'.
He added: 'This report is yet more damning evidence that the principle of sponsorship, which ties migrant workers in the UK to their employer, is inherently unsafe for workers and, in our view, breaches their human rights.
'Structural reform of the sponsorship system must urgently be undertaken if this Government is to meaningfully uphold its commitments relating to employment and human rights.'
The PAC recommended that a clear method must be set out on assessing what happens when visas end, 'specifically what measures are in place or will be put in place to record when people leave the country'.