Care agencies accused of exploiting foreign workers

Migrants left trapped with huge debts and little or no work

- Kiran Stacey, Poonam Joshi

British social care agencies have been accused of exploiting foreign workers, leaving migrants living on the breadline as they struggle to pay off debts run up while trying to secure jobs that fail to materialise.

Dozens of people working for 11 different care providers have told the Guardian they paid thousands of pounds to agents to secure jobs working in UK care homes or residential care, with most finding limited or no employment when they arrived.

Many are now struggling to pay off huge debts in their home countries and having to work in irregular jobs for below the minimum wage.

Both Labour and the Conservatives are under pressure to tackle the issue if they win next month's election. The Tories have recently banned migrant care workers from bringing their dependants with them, and Labour said last week it would keep this in place in an effort to reduce net migration to the UK.

But experts say the ban fails to tackle the deeper issue of exploitation of the workers themselves, many of whom are still in the UK and living in poverty, afraid to leave their employers for fear of losing their visa status.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has now written to both parties to demand a full government inquiry into treatment of migrant care workers when parliament returns.

Prof Nicola Ranger, the acting general secretary of the RCN, said: "The exploitation of migrant care workers is a national scandal but little has been done to tackle it. A chronically understaffed social care sector has supercharged its recruitment of staff from overseas and a lack of regulation and enforcement has allowed some employers to profit from the mistreatment of migrants."