UofG Centre for Public Policy

11 December 2025: At the SNP annual conference in October, First Minister John Swinney announced the Scottish Government's intention to sponsor visas for care workers in Scotland. Professor Sergi Pardos-Prado examines this announcement and the rationale behind it, asking is this policy or politics?

Blog by Professor Sergi Pardos-Prado, University of Glasgow 

About 80% of us will need some form of social care after 65, according to Andrew Dilnot, whose 2011 report has been largely ignored by successive governments. The figure sounds grim, but it also reflects major social advances: we live longer and healthier lives, the welfare state now covers needs unimaginable a few decades ago, and women—historically the silent caregivers in private households—are far more likely to be in the formal workforce.

These societal changes have produced a dangerous imbalance: demand for social care has surged, while domestic labour supply lags behind. Immigration has therefore become an attractive policy response for many high-income countries. Migrant care workers are now common and account for at least 10% of the social care workforce across the OECD-- from bespoke care-worker visa routes in Canada and Israel, to more general labour migration channels used either liberally (as in Italy or in Spain) or selectively through strict salary and shortage criteria (as in Australia and New Zealand).

We have seen a genuine shift in both immigration flows and policy debates in recent years. Net migration to the UK between 2021 and 2023 reached unusually high levels, with adult social care playing a central role. Following advice from the Migration Advisory Committee in late 2021, the government opened the skilled worker route to foreign-born care workers—making social care the only low-wage occupation allowed under the post-Brexit immigration system. The debate soon became dominated by concerns over rising numbers and reports of serious worker exploitation. Against this backdrop, different governments banned care workers from bringing dependants in March 2024 and closed the route to new entrants entirely from July 2025. Workers already in the system can remain, renew their visas until at least 2028, and switch to other routes if they meet the requirements.

The recent announcement of the Scottish Government on care worker visas is the latest turn of this roller coaster of trends and policy changes. The media reported the proposal as an attempt to sponsor visa applications for workers needed to staff care homes, at a cost of about £500,000. The language around sponsorship, however, was confusing. New visas are not allowed under current rules, sponsors are technically care providers, and Scottish-specific sponsorship schemes are not allowed in a reserved and heavily centralised policy area like immigration.

Official government announcements seemed clearer. They framed the fund as support for “displaced international social care workers who have found themselves without sponsored employment elsewhere in the UK through no fault of their own.” Yet the scale and nature of this displacement remain unclear. The new rules bar new entrants but allow existing migrant care workers to renew their visas and remain in the UK. Notably, the number of migrant care workers began to fall in November 2023-- before the restrictive policy changes were announced in December and well ahead of their implementation in March 2024. The sharp decline in new visas instead followed the enforcement of the “genuine vacancy test” for skilled worker applications, which targeted posts advertised without guaranteed hours or confirmed contracts. Ultimately, staff shortages and care home closures are driven less by migration policy than by chronic underfunding, uncertain workforce planning, rising costs, and, in some cases, concerns about the quality of care.

The policy rationale behind Scotland’s sponsorship of care worker visas is therefore unclear. In this case, the proposal may be driven as much by migration politics as by migration policy. Heightened public attention and polarisation around immigration, the opportunity to position Scotland against Labour’s increasingly restrictive narrative, and the post-Brexit realignment between Scottish identity and a more liberal stance on immigration may all be equally important motivations.

This is not to say that the approach of the Scottish government to the care sector is misguided. Quite the opposite. Pay and terms and conditions for care workers, and the framework regulating registration and qualifications (and therefore career progression) have been superior in Scotland than in the rest of the UK. In fact, this could partly explain a comparatively lower reliance on foreign-born workforce.

Social care is one of the most pressing policy challenges across the OECD. Meeting it will require a difficult balance: dignified career pathways, funding and pay that can attract domestic workers away from other low-wage sectors, and a regulated immigration system that avoids exploitation while not postponing deeper structural reform. None of this is easy—but it is possible. What it demands, above all, is a closer alignment between strategy and realism, and between politics and policy.

Author

Sergi Pardos-Prado is Professor of Comparative Politics at the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. He is also the Research Excellence Framework lead for Politics and International Studies at Glasgow, and an Affiliated Researcher at the Centre for Public Policy.

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^{Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash}

First published: 11 December 2025