Britain’s Immigration Policy Has an Accountability Problem

Britain’s immigration failures were built through government decisions. Ministers expanded a route without properly assessing its consequences, oversaw a sponsorship system vulnerable to fraud, and deliberately paused cancellations when care sponsors lost their licences. The public deserves accountability for those choices.

The public warning has been repeated

In August 2026, YouGov reported that 69% of Britons believed immigration over the previous ten years had been too high. When it asked the same question in 2016, 70% said so. A decade apart, the message was unmistakable: a large majority believed immigration had exceeded acceptable levels.^[1]

Whose views shaped settlement policy?

The Home Office’s earned-settlement consultation received 202,241 individual responses. 73% came from current visa holders; 18% from British citizens. The report itself warns that responses were unweighted and should not be interpreted as representative of the wider public.^[2]

YouGov: views on past immigration levels. Home Office: respondents to proposed settlement reforms. Consultation percentages are rounded.

On 2 November, the Home Secretary explicitly linked care-worker settlement arrangements to consultation responses. Ministers were responding to a pool dominated by people whose own settlement prospects were at stake. Using that feedback to justify concessions gives self-selected respondents greater influence without demonstrating wider public consent.^[3]

Expanded first, assessed later

In its March 2025 audit, the National Audit Office found that the Home Office expanded the care-worker route in 2022 without an impact assessment. It was also unprepared for the additional risks.^[5]

The same audit found that resource constraints meant just 1% of sponsors had been referred for compliance checks, with more than half of live cases awaiting a compliance visit. Across the wider Skilled Worker route, asylum claims rose from 53 in 2022 to 5,300 in 2024.^[5] Government expanded the system before it had the safeguards or oversight to manage it.

A real care home’s identity, a fraudulent licence

The Home Office’s own March 2024 response to an inspection acknowledged that a sponsor licence had been secured using false information and evidence in the name of a real care home, without that home’s knowledge. The licence was then granted 275 Defined Certificates of Sponsorship.^[6]

The department also listed reasons for revoking care sponsors’ licences: workers supplied to third parties as labour, workers doing different jobs, failure to pay promised salaries and breaches of employment law.^[6] These failures strike at the basic premise of the route: a genuine employer offering a genuine, properly paid care job.

The cancellation pause was deliberate

At a Public Accounts Committee hearing on 8 May 2025, Home Office director Marc Owen made the position explicit.^[7]

“In terms of care workers, we have not been cancelling their visas since late 2023.”

Marc Owen, Home Office · Public Accounts Committee, 8 May 2025 ^[7]

He said officials had deliberately worked with the Department of Health and Social Care to rematch workers to genuine providers and avoid pushing them into illegal work or asylum claims.^[7] The government’s response to failed sponsorship included preserving permission to stay while it sought replacement jobs.

That admission demands an explanation of the department’s March 2024 statement that withdrawing sponsors’ licences inevitably led to cancelling workers’ leave. Its later testimony described a deliberate pause dating from before that statement was published.^{[6] [7]} The public was entitled to a clear account of the policy actually being applied.

By 2 November 2026, the Home Secretary was reporting approximately 1,800 employers, primarily in care, stripped of sponsor licences.^[3] Yet the September 2026 cancellation guidance still expressly protected care workers from cancellation solely because their sponsor lost its licence.^[4]

Government owns the consequences

The record spans successive governments: expansion without an impact assessment, weak compliance capacity, sponsorship obtained through false evidence and an explicit cancellation pause. Ministers authorised the system and officials administered it. Responsibility belongs with them.

Accountability requires publishing how many affected workers obtained genuine replacement jobs, how many permissions ended and how many people left. It also requires explaining why an unrepresentative consultation should carry such weight when the public has repeatedly judged immigration too high.