The Residence Workplace doesn’t know whether or not international employees are leaving the UK or staying to work illegally after their visas expire, a cross-party committee of MPs has mentioned.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which scrutinises authorities spending, mentioned the Residence Workplace had didn’t analyse exit checks because the expert employee visa route was launched in 2020 underneath the Conservatives.
Some 1.18 million individuals have utilized to come back to the UK through this route between its launch in December 2020 and the top of 2024.
The Residence Workplace mentioned earlier this yr that it was working to modernise border safety and enhance digital checks. The BBC has approached the Residence Workplace for touch upon the report.
The expert employee visa route changed the Tier 2 (Basic) work visa after the UK left the European Union.
The route was expanded in 2022 by the earlier Conservative authorities to deal with talent shortages and job vacancies in well being and social care within the wake of the Covid pandemic, driving web migration to report ranges.
However the PAC has accused the Residence Workplace of failing to assemble “fundamental data” on whether or not individuals depart the UK after their visas expire and displaying “little curiosity about how the route was working”.
Its report mentioned the division nonetheless relied on airline passenger information to verify if somebody had left the nation and that there had been no evaluation of these information since 2020.
It added that the Residence Workplace wanted to set out what measures could be put in place to report when individuals had left the nation.
The report additionally mentioned there was “widespread proof of employees struggling debt bondage, working extreme hours and exploitative circumstances” and accused the division of being “gradual and ineffective” to sort out exploitation.
In Might, Residence Secretary Yvette Cooper mentioned the federal government would finish abroad recruitment for care employees as a part of the plans to curb close to report web migration.
Residence Workplace Everlasting Secretary Dame Antonia Romeo has additionally mentioned overstaying is a “drawback” the division was “fixing”.
