The closed loop of injustice: why care workers need fair settlement and fair commissioning

On Monday 28 September 2026, migrant care workers will gather outside the Labour Party conference in Liverpool to protest against the government's proposed changes to settlement. UNISON is organising the rally, following a motion carried unanimously at the Trades Union Congress calling for the earned settlement proposals to be withdrawn. Over 100 Labour MPs are reported to oppose the plans, and concern is growing within the government. The Prime Minister is believed to be considering an exemption for workers already in the UK, and the Home Secretary has said a decision is imminent.

The Homecare Association represents employers, not workers, and we do not always share the unions' view. On this issue, however, we agree. We have submitted extensive evidence to the government warning that extending the qualifying period for settlement from five to 15 years for care workers risks driving experienced staff out of the sector, increasing exploitation and reducing the availability of care for older and disabled people.

But the problem goes much deeper than the settlement period. Britain has created a system in which the state suppresses care workers' earnings through its purchasing decisions, then proposes to penalise migrant workers for earning too little. It is a closed loop of injustice.

Changing the rules years later breaks trust

When international recruitment expanded in 2022, care workers were invited to help address severe workforce shortages. They came on a visa that offered a five-year route to settlement. Many relocated with their families, sold property or borrowed money to do so. Since then, they have built their lives here, developed relationships with the people they support and become valued members of their communities.

Skills for Care estimates that about 230,000 people arrived in Britain and started care roles in England's independent adult social care sector between 2022/23 and 2024/25. Under the current rules, many would become eligible for settlement over the next few years. Applying a new rulebook to them now would not simply be a technical change to the Immigration Rules. It would break trust, and trust is hard to rebuild.

This is no longer a debate about new migration

Public concern about immigration is real, and the government is entitled to respond to it. But the government ended direct overseas recruitment into care worker roles in July 2025. Skills for Care data show that international recruits entering the care sector fell from about 105,000 in 2023/24 to about 30,000 in 2025/26. Only workers already in the UK can now move into sponsored care roles, under transitional arrangements due to run until July 2028.

The practical question now is not how many care workers should come to the UK. It is whether we keep the experienced care workers who are already here.

What our members are telling us

In January 2026, we surveyed 108 homecare providers employing around 15,000 care workers. Among respondents, 28% reported that sponsored staff had already left because of uncertainty over settlement, and half said sponsored workers had told them they would leave if the qualifying period increased. Almost half (48%) expected to hand back care packages or reduce the care they deliver as a result of the policy. We reported the findings in a supplement to our submission on earned settlement.

The effect on capacity is greater than the headcount suggests. Sponsored workers are required to work full-time, and in 59% of responding organisations they delivered a greater share of care hours than their share of the workforce. Replacing them will not be straightforward: 28% of respondents received no suitable applicants who did not need sponsorship, and a further 40% received only one or two.

These are providers' reported experiences and expectations, rather than nationally representative estimates. Nevertheless, they reveal the practical consequences of policy uncertainty.

What happens to people who need care

Loss of homecare capacity is not an abstract workforce problem. It means people losing familiar care workers and going without help to wash, dress, eat, take medication and move safely around their homes. Unpaid carers absorb the pressure. Some people deteriorate and are admitted to hospital when they could have stayed at home, while others remain in hospital because no care is available to support them at home.

We saw in winter 2021/22 how shortages in social care contributed to delayed discharges, ambulance queues and corridor care. Losing experienced care workers now would work directly against the government's plans to shift care from hospital into the community.

Exploitation is real, but enforcement alone is insufficient

UNISON has repeatedly highlighted the exploitation experienced by some migrant care workers, including illegal recruitment fees, debt, unpaid wages and threats involving immigration status. These are serious problems. No worker should be trapped in exploitative employment because leaving an employer could jeopardise their right to remain in the country. We support strong action against bogus sponsorship, deliberate exploitation and illegal recruitment practices.

The TUC motion calls for a sector-wide visa scheme, protection against retrospective changes, and retention of the five-year settlement route. These demands overlap substantially with the recommendations in our consultation submissions. A longer route to settlement would make exploitation more likely, not less, because workers who depend on one sponsor for 15 years have less freedom to challenge poor practices or leave a bad employer.

But treating exploitation solely as a problem of rogue employers overlooks the structural conditions in which legitimate providers operate. Immigration rules require sponsoring employers to offer full-time employment, sufficient hours, and salaries that meet prescribed thresholds. Yet councils and NHS bodies, the dominant purchasers of homecare, frequently guarantee providers no work at all.

A provider may recruit a sponsored worker to meet anticipated demand, only for someone receiving care to be admitted to hospital, move into residential care or die. Commissioners can reduce or withdraw care packages at short notice, with no guarantee that replacement work will follow. The employer remains responsible for meeting its sponsorship and employment obligations. As we explain in our September paper on homecare commissioning, the government expects providers to guarantee workers an income that public commissioners will not guarantee to providers.

That mismatch does not excuse employers who break the law. It does, however, expose the limits of relying on enforcement without addressing the commissioning practices that make secure employment so difficult.

Who determines what care workers earn?

The earned settlement proposals place considerable emphasis on economic contribution, including earnings. But care workers do not set their own wages. Their earnings are shaped by the prices that councils and NHS bodies are prepared to pay for care, and those bodies buy around 80% of homecare.

Our Minimum Price for Homecare in England for 2026/27 is £34.42 per hour. This includes £26.17 in direct care worker costs, covering contact time, travel, waiting, mileage and statutory employment costs. Our Homecare Deficit 2025 research found that 29% of councils and Health and Social Care Trusts paid average rates below even the direct employment costs of care workers at the National Living Wage. Some commissioners also pay providers only for the exact minutes spent in people's homes, rather than the working time needed to deliver those visits.

How can employers guarantee sponsored workers stable hours and sufficient salaries when public purchasers offer neither sufficient prices nor dependable work? And how can the government reasonably use earnings as a measure of contribution when its own purchasing practices constrain those earnings?

Care work is also skilled work. Care workers administer medication, carry out healthcare tasks delegated by nurses, support people living with dementia, and care for people at the end of their lives. They often work alone in people's homes, applying safeguarding and mental capacity law as they go. Their contribution cannot be measured by salary alone.

Zero-hours commissioning drives zero-hours employment

The contradictions extend beyond immigration. The government is introducing stronger employment protections and a Fair Pay Agreement for adult social care, both intended to improve workers' pay and security. Yet many councils still commission homecare through frameworks that guarantee no volume, spread work across large numbers of providers and pay only for contact time. Providers are expected to maintain enough staff to respond to changing demand, while carrying the financial risk of cancellations, hospital admissions and gaps between visits.

A higher hourly wage does not produce a decent weekly income if workers have fragmented rotas and long unpaid gaps. Our commissioning paper describes anonymised payroll records from one provider showing care workers expected to be available for up to 98 hours in a week to deliver just 39 paid contact hours. That is neither a sustainable foundation for fair employment nor an efficient use of a scarce workforce.

Commissioning reform offers a practical way forward

We do not have to accept these arrangements as inevitable. Our September paper, Homecare: commissioning is the key to quality, fair work and better outcomes, proposes a different approach. In the immediate term, neighbourhood commissioning can concentrate enough work within compact geographical areas to reduce travel, improve continuity and enable providers to offer more dependable hours. Contracts need fair prices, predictable volumes and payment arrangements that recognise the capacity required to deliver care, rather than paying retrospectively for contact minutes alone.

Better approaches already exist. Skills for Care's neighbourhood-based block-pay blueprint, drawing on Be Caring's experience, shows how more predictable commissioning can support payment for whole working rounds, including travel, reasonable gaps and training. In the longer term, we propose that funding should follow assessed need and individual choice, with providers paid prospectively for the capacity and outcomes they are responsible for delivering. This should be underpinned by a National Contract for Care Services, with a transparent minimum price and safeguards for quality and employment standards.

These reforms would help create the conditions for lawful sponsorship, secure employment, and better continuity of care. They would also support the government's ambitions for neighbourhood health services, prevention, and care closer to home.

What we are asking for

• Confirm now that care workers already in the UK will not be subject to a longer route to settlement. People who came under one set of rules should not be penalised retrospectively.
• Recognise care work as skilled work, in policy and in the way ministers and officials describe it.
• Introduce a sector-wide sponsorship scheme, so that care workers can move between compliant employers without putting their visa at risk.
• Reform commissioning, with fair prices, predictable volumes, neighbourhood commissioning and payment for whole working rounds.
• Make enforcement proportionate, with better arrangements for displaced workers and safeguards for people receiving care when sponsor licences are revoked.
• Join up government. The Home Office, the Department of Health and Social Care, local government, NHS commissioners and the departments responsible for employment policy must address how their decisions interact. Otherwise, one part of government will continue imposing requirements that another makes increasingly difficult to fulfil.

Keep our word, and change the way the state buys care

For too long, social care has been treated as a cost to be minimised rather than essential national infrastructure. International recruitment helped sustain the workforce when domestic recruitment could not meet demand. Now settlement uncertainty risks destabilising that workforce before the underlying employment and commissioning problems have been resolved.

The government can take the first step this week by confirming that care workers already here will not face a longer route to settlement. They came when the country asked for help, and they have been looking after our families ever since. The least we owe them is to keep our word.

But we cannot solve a problem created by fragmented government policy through immigration enforcement alone. We must change the way the state buys care.