A UK-based Indian-origin reporter from Kerala, who went undercover as a care assistant in a care home for the elderly in north-east England, has revealed worrying levels of staff exploitation.
India is one of the main overseas sources of care home and nursing staff in the United Kingdom. According to data published in May 2022 by The Nursing and Midwifery Council, the period of 2021-22 showed 37,815 Indian nurses on the Council’s register of those qualified to work in the UK. This figure was a 34 per cent increase from the 28,192 qualified Indian nurses on the NMC register in 2020-21; and more than double the number of 17,730 qualified Indian nurses four years ago.
The Philippines is the top overseas source of nursing and care staff in the UK, and Nigeria is in third position after India.
How they are treated while working in the UK is the subject of Balakrishnan Balagopal’s report for the BBC Panorama investigation, telecast in the UK last evening. The televised report was titled Care Workers Under Pressure.
During his time as an undercover reporter working at the UK care home, Balagopal found that carers were being charged thousands of pounds by an Indian recruitment agency. He also found that nurses were being locked into lengthy contracts with a care home, with financial penalties to be imposed if they tried to leave their jobs.
According to official statistics for the past year, 140,000 visas were issued to overseas workers to come to the UK to meet staff shortages in the health and care industry and 39,000 of these went to people from India.
“As I delved deeper into the lives of overseas caregivers, I heard a narrative of exploitation, debt, separation from family, and the constant fear of making mistakes,” Balagopal said in a statement.
“The pursuit of a permanent visa became a tightrope walk, impacting the quality of care provided. The very individuals tasked with ensuring the happiness and well-being of [care home] residents found themselves entangled in a web of instability,” said the reporter.
Nurses and care workers from overseas, who are eligible for a skilled worker visa in the UK, need to be sponsored by an employer. In theory, they can switch jobs but within a limited timeframe, which can give employers a certain exploitative hold over them.
BBC Panorama report corroborates UK advisory body’s report
The Care Workers Under Pressure investigation for the BBC comes soon after the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), the independent body advising the UK government on immigration, warned of exploitation in the country’s social care sector in its annual report released last week.
“Underfunding and consequential low pay contributes to the exploitation of workers in the social care sector. Migrants in the sector on the H&CW (Health & Care Worker) visa are even more susceptible to exploitation as their right to reside in the UK is directly linked to their employer, creating a power imbalance,” the MAC report noted.
The MAC report issued a series of recommendations for the government to crack down on the exploitation of workers in the social care sector.
“Government could consider greater support for migrants when they enter employment and when experiencing exploitation in the UK… such as creating a portal specifically for the care sector where vacancies that would allow migrants to switch employer are posted,” it said.
MAC also called on the government to ensure higher wages for the sector on the whole, in a bid to wean it off the over-reliance on lower-paid migrant workers.
Earlier this month, the Home Office announced that such care workers on a visa would be banned from bringing any close family members as dependents from the New Year. The move has been described as “extremely unfair” by the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (BAPIO), the UK’s largest representative body for doctors and nurses of Indian origin. “For anyone to provide a satisfactory and good quality care service, they can’t be separated from their own family,” said BAPIO founder Dr Ramesh Mehta.
—With inputs from CtoI News Desk