UK union UNISON has released a report highlighting how a "crumbling care system" is being propped up by vulnerable, exploited migrant staff. The union calls on the government to drop plans to cap overseas care staff as plans reportedly being drawn up by the immigration minister to curb migration would seriously and detrimentally impact the adult social care sector.

Among the abuses documented by the union are cases where workers sold possessions to raise money to come to the UK where employers have closed down, lost contracts and dismissed staff arbitrarily. Migrants are actively encouraged to come to the UK to work in the care sector to fill staff shortages. They are burdened by debts and financial costs charged by recruitment agencies in home countries to obtain jobs, by training costs if they try to leave jobs once in the UK, and administration costs. Companies are reportedly passing on Home Office charges to staff, including the immigration skills charge.

UNISON also documented how migrant workers are left in precarious positions when companies go bust or lose contracts, leaving them with no financial support of help to find another job. Earlier in November, Beaumont Healthcare handed back a contract with Cambridgeshire County Council and terminated more than 100 migrant care staff before closing. At the time Beaumont told the BBC it was working to ensure a "safe handover of care to other care providers" and assisting staff to transfer to other agencies and find new work. Fifteen migrant staff at Lighthouse Professional Care were similarly left in a situation of acute precarity when Wiltshire Council withdrew a contract. Business & Human Rights Resource Centre invited Lighthouse Professional Care to respond to the migrant workers' situation and outline what support had been offered to them; it did not.