Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing a non-sponsored route similar to the Frontier Worker scheme to include new employed and self-employed social care workers who are not resident in the UK.

The Citizens’ Rights Agreements protect those EEA or Swiss citizens who were frontier workers in the UK by the end of the transition period at 11pm on 31 December 2020 and who continue to be so. The UK’s frontier worker permit scheme, which has been open to applications since 10 December 2020, allows those protected frontier workers to obtain a permit, free of charge, as evidence of their right to continue entering the UK as a frontier worker after 30 June 2021.

There is no deadline by which protected frontier workers must apply for a permit, though it is mandatory for non-Irish frontier workers to hold a frontier worker permit to enter the UK for work from 1 July 2021.

Where an overseas worker is not protected by the Citizens’ Rights Agreements, the new points-based immigration system provides routes for skilled workers. There are no plans to make available a route for those who do not meet the skills threshold of the Skilled Worker route. Nursing auxiliaries and Social Care workers including health care support workers, senior carers, senior support workers and nursing home team leaders do meet the skills threshold but would need to be sponsored by a licenced sponsor.

The introduction of the Health and Care visa last August made it quicker and cheaper for regulated health and care professionals – including Senior Care Workers - and their dependants to secure their visa. We have commissioned the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to look further at the issues surrounding the ending of free movement on the social care sector and we look forward to receiving their report by the end of April 2022.