The home office does not know whether foreign workers are leaving the UK or living illegally after their visa is over, a cross-party committee of MPs has said.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which investigates government spending, said that the investigation of exit from the home office has failed to analyze as the skilled worker visa route was introduced under the conservatives in 2020.
Some 1.18 million people have applied to the UK through this route in December 2020 and the end of 2024.
The home office said earlier this year that it was working to modernize border security and promote digital checks. The BBC has approached the home office to comment on the report.
The Tier 2 (General) work visa replaced after the UK left the UK’s European Union.
In view of the Kovid epidemic, the route was expanded in 2022 by the previous orthodox government to address skills in health and social care and address vacancies, which was running pure migration to a record level.
But the PAC has accused the home office of failing to gather “basic information” whether people leave the UK after their visa ended and “show some curiosity about how the route was going”.
Its report states that the department still rely on the airline passenger records whether anyone has left the country and no analysis of those records since 2020.
It said that the home office needed to determine what measures would be taken to record when people left the country.
The report also stated that “had widespread evidence of workers suffering from debt bonding, working under excessive hours and exploiting conditions” and accused the department of being “slow and ineffective” to deal with exploitation.
In May, Home Secretary Yvet Cooper said that the government will abolish foreign recruitment for care workers As part of the plan to curb the record net migration.
Dame Antonia Romeo, permanent secretary of the home office, has also said Ovesteing is a “problem” that was the department “fixing”.
