A social care champion says Reform UK\u2019s \u201cpotentially catastrophic\u201d plan to threaten legal immigrants with deportation would put vulnerable people at risk in Wales.<\/p>\n
Mario Kreft MBE, the chair of Care Forum Wales, says it would be hugely damaging to care homes and home care companies who rely on overseas workers and put more pressure on the already beleaguered NHS.<\/p>\n
According to Reform leader Nigel Farage, migrants should be forced to reapply for new visas and he pledged to abolish the main route towards permanent settlement in the UK.<\/p>\n
The controversial idea has already attracted cross-party condemnation and Mr Kreft pointed out that the social care sector was \u201chugely dependent\u201d on overseas workers.<\/p>\n
The scale of the problem , he said, was emphasised by official statistics which showed that 15 per cent of registered care workers in Wales were\u00a0 born outside the UK.<\/p>\n
Mr Kreft said: \u201cThese proposed new policies from Reform UK present significant risks to the adult social care sector here in Wales.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people who staff these vital institutions are highly skilled, giving us added value beyond helping us solve the problem of the fact that we have insufficient numbers of local people willing to work in the sector.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is being proposed here, stripping people of their Indefinite Leave to Remain status and moving them back onto visas, amounts to changing the rules of the game half way through.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve relied for many years on people from overseas to come and provide care, nurses and doctors in the NHS and in social care.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce you start talking about changing the rules, once you start making it less attractive or people feel less welcome, people will be feeling very anxious.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will be people who\u2019ve worked for years in this country, all through Covid who\u2019ve done fantastic work caring for people from Britain who now will be thinking, \u2018am I really welcome here?\u2019 Is this going to be the future that we\u2019ve talked to the family about or even do we have to move to another country\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou cannot underestimate the anxiety and fear this has already caused and it\u2019s making it even harder to recruit staff and we may very well lose a significant number of those we currently have as they seek opportunities in countries with more welcoming attitudes.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s be clear, this potentially catastrophic policy is focusing on reducing the numbers of people coming here who we need, who come here by legal means and contribute to the society and to the tax base.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s curtailing necessary, legal immigration to deal with this issue of the small boats which is a totally separate thing. We need to call this what it is, a cynical conflation of totally distinct issues for headline grabbing, political point scoring.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a headline grabbing policy which will win votes but the implications of this would be serious in the short term but disastrous in the longer term.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a sector, we see more clearly than any other the needs that arise from having an ageing population.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are already suffering a major staffing crisis in Wales with more than 10,000 vacancies in social care.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we lose people that we cannot replace and that is highly likely from this\u00a0 misguided policy, then inevitably, great pressure will be put on the system.<\/p>\n
\u201cCare homes\u00a0 and domiciliary care companies would almost certainly curtail their services and some would even close down.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will be many countries who\u2019d want to take these people.\u00a0 They\u2019re highly skilled and quite honestly, they deserve far better than this.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would all fall back on the NHS and when the social care sector sneezes, the NHS catches a cold. This is madness.\u201d<\/p>\n