Home Office unaware if foreign workers leave UK after visas end, MPs say

The House Workplace doesn’t know whether or not international staff 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 House Workplace had did not analyse exit checks for the reason that expert employee visa route was launched in 2020 beneath the Conservatives.Some 1.18 million individuals have utilized to return to the UK by way of this route between its launch in December 2020 and the tip of 2024.The House Workplace mentioned earlier this yr that it was working to modernise border safety and increase digital checks. The BBC has approached the House 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 handle talent shortages and job vacancies in well being and social care within the wake of the Covid pandemic, driving web migration to file ranges.However the PAC has accused the House Workplace of failing to assemble “primary info” on whether or not individuals go away 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 data to test if somebody had left the nation and that there had been no evaluation of these data since 2020. It added that the House Workplace wanted to set out what measures could be put in place to file when individuals had left the nation.The report additionally mentioned there was “widespread proof of staff struggling debt bondage, working extreme hours and exploitative circumstances” and accused the division of being “sluggish and ineffective” to sort out exploitation.In Might, House Secretary Yvette Cooper mentioned the federal government would finish abroad recruitment for care staff as a part of the plans to curb close to file web migration.House Workplace Everlasting Secretary Dame Antonia Romeo has additionally mentioned overstaying is a “downside” the division was “fixing”.