Ministers need to reconsider ban of overseas care workers' families - The YP says

The move came earlier this month as part of a five-point plan to cut migration announced by Home Secretary James Cleverly, who claimed it would mean around 300,000 people who were eligible to come to the UK last year would not be able to in future.

Unison and the National Care Forum have now urged ministers to scrap the policy, saying it will undermine care services for millions of families.

As the latter’s chief executive Professor Vic Rayner says, “workforce shortage is recognised as the primary stumbling block to the delivery of an integrated health and care system”.

It is totally at odds with the needs of people in this country: an arbitrary, short-term idea which will only disincentivise workers who might otherwise have come here to provide invaluable care to our loved ones.

If Mr Cleverly is so keen for British workers to take up these jobs instead, where is the proper plan to train them up and incentivise them with better pay? The white paper on adult social care two years ago did little to assuage complaints of a staffing crisis.

People understandably have fears about migration and a small minority of those exploiting it with ill-intent. Let’s be clear: they are not the workers targeted by these self-sabotaging plans, who want to pay their way and enjoy happy, stable family lives - hence bringing their dependents - while undertaking roles which require empathy and skill.

Mr Cleverly and Victoria Atkins, Secretary for Health and Social Care, must return to the ban, examine the detail and reconsider this counterproductive misstep.