UK visas a biased mess, Home Office oversight a black hole, find MPs

The Home Office has no idea how many people overstay their visa and whether they leave the country afterwards it has admitted – with MPs calling for reform of the “Skilled Workers” visa route and improved IT systems. 

A report published today (July 4) by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) found that the Home Office had forecast that it would issue 360,000 Skilled Worker visas to overseas applicants (including dependants) over the three years to April 2024, but instead it issued 931,000 – a figure that soared after care home workers were added to the list of eligible roles.

"We asked the Home Office whether it knows if people leave the country when their visa expires. The Home Office told us the only way that it can tell if people are still in the country is to match the data it holds on individuals with the passenger data it receives on people using airlines.The Home Office has not analysed exit checks since the route was introduced and does not know what proportion of people return to their home country after their visa has expired, and how many may be working illegally." - PAC

The Home Office said there was scope to "strengthen exit checks as part of its wider digital transformation of border security systems and introduction of eVisas," PAC noted in its report.

The government pre-empted the release of the report, saying on July 1 that it was making “sweeping reforms” and stripping 111 eligible occupations from the Skilled Workers visa route – promising “further measures on asylum and border security” as it looks to address one of the biggest political hot potatoes in politics amid pressure from the Reform party. 

Home Office IT transformation needed

Echoing a National Audits Office (NAO) report published on March 11, PAC said that the Home Office also “needs to address operational issues with the IT system used for processing visa applications” – drawing particular attention to the delayed replacement of a visa sponsorship IT system.

Replacement of this has been pushed back by five years from 2023 to 2028 : “The Home Office told us that the planned transformation was delayed due to the lack of basic infrastructure, the large amount of transformation taking place across the department, and its prioritisation of competing demands, such as eVisas and… the Ukraine visa routes.”

Uninspiring Americans favoured over genius Indians 

In written evidence to the PAC, industry body techUK took the opportunity to lambaste the High Potential Individual (HPI) visa route. 

“Currently, graduates from some of the world’s top high-tech educational institutions, such as the Indian Institutes of Technology, are not eligible for the UK’s High Potential Individual (HPI) visa, due to the restrictive and US-centric nature of the current eligibility list,” techUK told MPS. 

The route, it said, “favours graduates from a narrow group of primarily US universities… under the current rules, a graduate with a third-class liberal arts degree from a listed US university may qualify, while a top-performing physics graduate from an Indian Institute of Technology does not.”

PAC called (The Stack’s summary) for the government to do five things. 

1. Improve Collaboration: The Home Office should work more closely with other government departments to understand the real-world impact of visa changes on different UK sectors and regions.
2. Evaluate the Skilled Worker Visa: The Home Office needs to properly evaluate the costs, benefits, and any unintended consequences of the Skilled Worker visa route.
3. Address Social Care Sector Needs: The government must provide more detail on its decision to stop overseas recruitment for care workers and monitor the impact this has on the social care sector.
4. Combat Exploitation: A clear, multi-departmental plan is needed to tackle the exploitation of migrant workers, including safeguarding them when their sponsor's licence is revoked.
5. Strengthen Compliance: The Home Office must conduct a full assessment of its methods for tackling visa compliance risks, including better data analysis and a clear way to track what happens to people after their visa expires.