Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what long-term assessment he has made of the potential effect of the UK leaving the EU on the recruitment of care workers.

The flow of European Union workers into the sector annually is small comparable to the size of the workforce. Fewer than 5% of all workers joining the sector in a direct care role in 2019/20 had arrived from the EU in the previous 12 months. Therefore, we do not anticipate that the end-of-transition will have an immediate impact on workforce supply. However, we will monitor its impact closely as more data becomes available over the coming months.