Cash For Care Jobs
2024The Mail’s six-month investigation exposed how government blunders created a devastating care crisis, leaving the ‘vulnerable looking after the vulnerable’.
Despite being bombarded with legal threats from health agencies, Mail journalists Tom Kelly, Isaan Khan and Kate Pickles painstakingly gathered the evidence to unmask rogue recruiters making millions by exploiting relaxed new visa laws to charge migrants illegal ‘work finder fees’ of up to £20,000 to secure them care jobs.
The Mail showed how a lack of basic Home Office checks on these recruits meant the care sector was flooded with untrained staff – some treated very poorly – who put the health of their elderly patients at risk.
Those cashing in on the scandal included a Baptist minister who ran an illicit sideline charging migrant workers for jobs that had netted over £1 million.
He told the Mail’s undercover reporter that for £9,000 he could help her arrange guaranteed visa sponsorship and a care job in just three days.
They also unearthed documents showing how he was still able to operate despite his care recruitment company being suspended from the Home Office migrant sponsorship scheme a year earlier because it was suspected of illegally sponsoring nearly 400 migrants.
Three whistleblowers at another firm providing care services for the NHS described having seen around 100 overseas applicants arrive with holdalls stuffed with cash to pay senior managers for jobs. They said most had no qualifications which often left the elderly and vulnerable people they cared for at risk.
The team at the Mail also uncovered footage of a UK medical agency openly explaining how it deceived the Home Office to help migrant workers secure UK care jobs – for a charge of up to £5,000.
Migrant workers told how they had borrowed so much to pay for jobs they had been forced into debt and were forced to work 80-hour weeks but were too scared to report their mistreatment to the UK authorities for fear of being sacked.
The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority told us it was receiving a case of suspected exploitation in the care sector every day after an unprecedented 100,000 sponsorship visas had been issued in the two years since the rules were relaxed.
The Daily Mail’s exposé had an immediate impact. After senior Labour and Lib Dem politicians demanded action into the Mail’s ‘shocking findings’, then Home Secretary James Cleverly launched an immediate investigation into the scandal and pledged a crackdown.
"This Daily Mail investigation highlights the absurdity of this sponsorship scheme and whole immigration system. This scheme is not fit for purpose. This raises massive questions for the Home Office and I am sure they will want to take rapid and decisive action on this."
Neil O'Brien, former Conservative health minister