UK government cracks down on visa rule breaches

The government is planning stricter penalties for employers who exploit foreign workers or violate visa regulations. The proposed changes have been included in amendments to the Employment Rights Bill which is making its way through parliament. Currently employers who flagrantly flout visa rules can only be sanctioned for a maximum of 12 months. Under the changes the period for repeat offences will be at least two years. We’ll speak to an immigration expert on what it means for employers.

A number of national newspapers report on this, as well Personnel Today. The measures are designed to help protect migrant workers, particularly in sectors like social care where exploitation has been prevalent – since July 2022 around 450 sponsor licenses in the care sector have been revoked due to rule violations. The government is also implementing so-called ‘action plans’ that require companies with minor visa breaches to undertake specific corrective actions for 12 months, extended from the previous three-month period.

On the timing of this, the changes are being introduced through the Employment Rights Bill which is currently making its way through parliament. While the exact timeline for the bill’s passage is subject to parliamentary scheduling, the government has expressed a commitment to advancing these reforms quickly, possibly as soon as next year. 

So let’s hear more about these changes and how employers could be affected. Earlier I caught up with immigration lawyer Shara Pledger who joined me by video-link from Manchester to discuss it:

Shara Pledger: “This is something that's really been building up now for several, well, months, really. Over the course of the year we've seen this steady increase in relation to increasing levels of compliance action by UK Visas and Immigration. To date, it's very much been focused on particular sectors that are specific areas of concern, if you like. So most people will have seen things in the national press in relation to the health and social care industry for example and, certainly, if you look down into the figures of where a lot of this compliance action has come from it does tend to involve an awful lot of care homes as examples. What we're now seeing is a widening of the areas of concern. So we've really bought areas such as construction and infrastructure within that for example, and these latest announcements just kind of roll that out further, really, making it clear that regardless of industry, regardless of status as a sponsor, if you don't stick to the rules you may well fall foul of some kind of compliance action.”

Joe Glavina: “Of course, Shara, our clients are reputable businesses who strive to do the right thing and wouldn’t dream of breaching immigration laws on purpose but these rules do catch inadvertent mistakes don’t they?” 

Shara Pledger: “Absolutely and I think it's nothing new to say that a sponsor that would deliberately flout the rules and employ people into roles that were not genuine, or failed to pay them the right amounts, would obviously face some kind of sanction as a result of that, but what's really more of a concern for the vast majority of sponsors who are genuine, legitimate, entities is that it's very easy to make a mistake. Sponsor guidance is vast. It involves a number of different duties, whether that's to do with record keeping, reporting, or just the general day to day of employing an individual in the way that the sponsor guidance dictates that you should, and it is an area of concern to think about those very easy mistakes that can be made, particularly in large organisations that have perhaps a high number of sponsored workers, or just a high number of employees in general. One mistake could really snowball into something that's much more serious following these changes.”

Joe Glavina: “Aside from the penalties, Shara, there is also the possibility of reputational harm if breaches show up on the sponsor register which is a public document. So there is that risk?”

Shara Pledger: “There is. I think it's probably a lesser kind of risk from a reputation perspective in the normal day to day operations of sponsorship. While the sponsor register is public information, you could access it on any given day from the Home Office website, it’s huge. For starters, you'd really need to be kind of going through with a fine-tooth comb to look at the changes from one day to the next of who might be graded as an A and who might be graded as a B, for example. That's quite different to what we've seen in some other areas of immigration compliance as well. If you think about right to work checks and the civil penalties that are issued to employers in the event of illegal working, that is very much a name and same policy but that's not to say that things can't change. You know, if there's going to be an increasing number of interventions and sponsor licenses, just as we've seen this year, as I say, driven really by that health and social care sector, there's every possibility that we can start to see more of a name and shame approach in relation to that too.”

Joe Glavina: “So what do you want employers to do, Shara?”

Shara Pledger: “So I think really it's a combination of two things. The first is about being very aware, at all times, of what sponsor duties actually are. An awful lot of sponsors will get their sponsor licence usually because they might have one or two individuals that they're interested in at the particular time or, perhaps, there's some expansion that means that there'll be a new team for which you know you'll need to sponsor for recruitment. But obviously, the longer you hold that licence the further you get away from that initial assessment of what it means to be a sponsor. It's really important that organisations do keep up to date with how sponsor guidance changes and has a good grasp of what their duties and their responsibilities will be. Once they have that, obviously, an awful lot of this comes down to audit as well. It's very easy to make a mistake, as we've already discussed, and it's really important that a sponsor is in a position to be able to look at their records and identify those mistakes where they've occurred and, crucially, rectify them before the Home Office comes on the scene. It’s much easier to be able to have a compliance visit and say, look, we understand that we had a particular problem, we identified that, addressed that, updated our processes, and these things don't occur again. That's a much easier sell than the Home Office coming to you and saying, you know, what about this then and it turns out that you've not been doing something correctly.”

Joe Glavina: “Anything else to add, Shara?”

Shara Pledger: “I think it's really important for entities that sponsor to understand that it's not necessarily just about workers. I think a lot of the things in the press, for example, will tend to focus on sponsored workers particularly when they're quite big national stories like this whole story that we've seen about adult social care throughout the course of 2024. However, this trend and these recent announcements are actually indicative of a much wider approach from the Home Office when it comes to sponsor compliance and that covers everything. It's not just about this particular sector. It's not even just about workers. We are starting to see increasing levels of compliance action against the education sector for their international student recruitment as well. So it's clearly something that the Home Office are committed to doing. We expect 2025 to be a really key year in terms of what the approach to compliance will be in future and so whether you're a sponsor of any description, it's really important to make sure that your house is in order ready for the New Year.”

These changes are being brought through amendments to the Employment Rights Bill which is currently making its way through parliament. It’s a huge bill and different parts of it will come into force at different times, but the government has said it will be prioritising these changes. Seema Malhotra Migration and Citizenship Minister made a written statement to that effect which was presented to parliament on 28 November 2024 so we might see them as soon as next year. We will, of course, be tracking this closely for you as the Bill progresses.