Labour needs new ideas on immigration

Telegraph

11-05-2025

Among the slew of reforms to the immigration system to be announced today is a complete ban on visas for overseas care workers. Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, said this would take effect from this year and prevent local authorities and care homes recruiting from abroad. Since there is an estimated shortfall of 160,000 workers in this sector – and an ageing population means demand can only grow – where are the carers to come from?
We need to ask some fundamental questions. Why is it that with more than nine million people of working age not in the labour market that we need to bring workers in from abroad at all? Of course many of these people are not indolent; they may be students, full-time mothers, early retirees and the like.
None the less, there are millions living on benefits who could work but say they can't for a variety of reasons, often to do with physical or mental health issues. The growth in mental health claimants alone under PiP would go a long way in explaining our current labour shortages across the economy.
It is not as if the jobs aren't there but the willingness to do them is absent. The reason is that care work is hard and does not pay very much. Many on welfare will judge it is not worth the candle.
The solution, then, is either to cut benefits to the point where people have to work or pay care workers more to make the job worthwhile or a combination of both.
The Government is unlikely to risk the wrath of Labour backbenchers by cutting benefits, so Ms Cooper says she will introduce a fair wage for carers, presumably setting a floor beneath which employers cannot go. The history of governments controlling pay levels is not a good one. Moreover, care home owners claim to be operating at the margins of profitability already without having higher wages foisted upon them. The same is true of local councils, many of which are being bankrupted by high care costs foisted upon them by central government.
This is not to suggest Ms Cooper is wrong in her approach: the country is demanding a substantial cut in immigration and the two major parties are having to respond to the threat from Reform. But there are consequences that the politicians must be honest about. Ms Cooper says there are about 10,000 overseas care workers already in the country who came for jobs that did not exist and who could be recruited.
That may be so, though where they are is anyone's guess. All the talk of retraining British people to do work they have refused so far to contemplate is fanciful. Unless Labour can provide new ideas to old problems, we can expect to see the same issues over immigration repeating themselves.