Many foreign care workers in the UK say they are lured over on false promises that cause them to amass serious debts. Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images/Alamy/PA/Reuters.
Guardian Exclusive: Experts raise alarm over ‘national scandal’ that has hallmarks of trafficking and modern slavery
British social care agencies have been accused of exploiting foreign workers, leaving people 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.
Labour and the Conservatives are now under pressure to tackle the issue if they win next month’s election. The Tories recently banned foreign care workers bringing their dependents to the UK with them, a ban Labour said last week it would keep in place in an effort to bring net immigration down.
But experts say the ban has failed 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 nowwritten to the leaders of all three major national 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.”
She added: “An urgent government investigation into exploitation across the social care sector must be a priority for whoever wins the general election. Lives are being ruined daily and this work has to start as soon as possible.”
‘Great stories begin in social homes. But we’re living in a housing emergency, and we need to build more. Now.’
In England alone, 1.3 million households are stuck on waiting lists for housing. 145,800 children are growing up in temporary accommodation. During the last decade, 19,000 social rent homes have been lost every year. 90,000 social homes need to be built every year for the next ten years to end the housing emergency.
These alarming statistics are provided by the housing and homelessness charity Shelter. The research, carried out by Shelter and the National Housing Federation, found that the building of 90,000 social homes a year would pay for itself within three years, add over £50bn to the economy over 30 years, and support 140k direct jobs in the first year.
In the run-up to the general election, the charity has launched a Vote for Home campaign. Over 35,000 people have already put their signature to a letter calling on political leaders to fix the country’s housing crisis by building new social homes.
It urges Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer, Ed Davey, Carla Denya, and Adrian Ramsey to build social homes and “create a fairer renting system that will end the housing emergency.”
The letter notes how none of the leaders have promised to prioritise fixing the housing emergency.
Extinction Rebellion climate activists are blocking access to Farnborough Airport this morning (Sunday 2 June) to protest against the increasing use of highly polluting private jets by the super-rich and to call on the government to ban private jets, tax frequent flyers and make polluters pay.
Today’s blockade is part of a global week of action against private aviation under the banner Make Them Pay with actions in Denmark, Germany, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the US, and follows Europe’s largest private jet convention EBACE in Geneva this week. In Farnborough, protesters have barricaded the airport’s Gulfstream Gate with the iconic XR pink boat with “LOVE IN ACTION” painted on the side, Ively Gate has four protesters locked on to oil drums, and the airport’s departure gate has an activist mounted on a tripod blockading the entrance. Police have seized a second tripod.
A fourth group of protesters are playing cat and mouse with the airport authorities, moving between the airport’s other gates to block them. At all three main gates, protesters are releasing colourful smoke flares, chanting slogans and engaging with members of the public, accompanied by the XR Rebel Rhythms band of drummers.
The activists are supported at all three main entrances to the airport by scores of demonstrators holding banners reading “FLYING TO EXTINCTION”, “PRIVATE FLIGHTS = PUBLIC DEATHS”, “STOP PRIVATE FLIGHTS”, “PRIVATE FLIGHTS COST THE EARTH” and “TAX FREQUENT FLYERS”.
Climate activists are targeting Farnborough Airport in an escalating campaign because it is the UK’s largest private jet airport. Last year 33,120 private flights landed and took off from its runways, carrying an average of just 2.5 passengers per flight, making them up to 40 times more carbon intensive than regular flights. Currently 40% of flights to and from the airport are empty. The airport is now seeking planning permission to increase the number of planes taking off or landing from a maximum of 50,000 a year to up to 70,000 a year.
Farnborough Airport claims to be a centre for business aviation yet around 50% of Farnborough flights headed to the Mediterranean during summer months, rather than business locations, with around 25% heading to Alpine destinations during the winter months. Last year a service was launched specifically to shuttle dogs and their owners to Dubai and back.
The demonstration includes campaigners from Extinction Rebellion, who have joined forces with local residents, Quakers, and campaign organisations Farnborough Noise Group, Blackwater Valley Friends of the Earth, and Bristol Aviation Action Network to voice their opposition to the airport’s expansion plans.
Dr Jessica Upton, 54, from Oxford, a Veterinary surgeon and foster carer said: “I’m here today because private airports are an abomination. Expanding Farnborough would be putting the indulgent wants of the rich minority over the needs of the majority. Local people need cleaner air and less noise pollution, and the world’s population urgently needs rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to survive. Private airports disproportionately contribute to climate breakdown and closing them would boost our chances of sticking to the Paris Climate Accords, the supposedly legally binding international treaty agreed to and signed by our government.“
Daniela Voit, 37, from Surbiton, a Shiatsu Practitioner and Teacher, said: “Last year we hit a global average temperature rise of 1.5oC degrees celsius over an entire year. For decades we were told a 1.5oC rise needs to be avoided to avoid catastrophic changes to our lives due to the planetary warming caused by humanity’s CO2 emissions. We can see the consequences of this temperature rise all over the world – currently immense flooding in Brazil and Afghanistan and temperature of 52C in Pakistan. To carry on flying in private jets, one of the biggest causes for CO2 emissions per person, in a time of climate crisis is reckless. The rich 1% that are flying from Farnborough Private Jet Airport seem to think they are exempt from taking responsibility for what they are doing to our only home. Banning Private Jets is one of the first things we need to do to stop further temperature rises. This is vital to ensure the survival of all life – human, animal and plant – on this planet that we call our Mother Earth.” Make Them Pay demands:
1) Ban private jets. Flying in a private jet is the most inefficient and carbon-intensive mode of transport. Flights on private jets can be as much as 40 times more carbon-intensive than regular flights, and 50 times more polluting than trains. A four-hour private flight emits as much as the average person does in a year. Private jet use is entirely inappropriate during a climate emergency.There’s strong public support for banning private jets and banning this mode of travel was a key recommendation of the Climate Assembly.
2) Tax frequent flyers. Various citizens’ assemblies, for example in the UK, Scotland, and France, have recommended that frequent flyers and those who fly further should pay more.
They believe this would “address issues of tax fairness, as currently those who don’t fly are subsidising those who do” and that “this would deliver significant behaviour changes across society and have a positive impact on reducing overall carbon emissions caused by flying.”
Taxes on air travel would be a socially progressive way of raising climate funds and have been proposed by the group representing the most vulnerable countries at COP27 as an effective way to raise climate finance and pay for loss and damage, alongside debt cancellation.
3)Make polluters pay. It is only fair that the wealthiest in society and the highest-income, highest-emitters pay for their climate damage, and pay the most into climate Loss and Damage funds for the most affected peoples and areas to mitigate and adapt to the worst impacts of climate change.
The top 1% of the global population by income are responsible for more emissions than the bottom 50% combined. So not only is it a question of morality that the wealthiest in society pay the most, and commit to the most rapid emissions reductions – it’s also a mathematical necessity and a question of practicality and science.
The people of the United States challenge Biden’s complicity in the Israeli genocide in Gaza, demand Biden end aid to Israel
Tens of thousands of people will are mobilizing to surround the White House on June 8 in protest of Biden’s complicity in the Israeli genocide in Gaza, principally the brutal invasion of Rafah, which takes more and more Palestinian lives each day.
Biden had claimed in the past that the invasion of Rafah by Israel would be a red line, and even threatened to withhold weapons shipments (while actually halting some shipments of bombs) over the threat of invasion.
“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah—they haven’t gone in Rafah yet—if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities—that deal with that problem,” Biden said during a CNN interview on May 8.
Nevertheless, Biden did nothing after Israel’s threats of invasion escalated into reality. The recent tent massacre horrified billions across the globe after Israel bombed forcibly displaced Palestinian families—using US-made munitions. To this day, Biden continues his unconditional support for Israel.
Despite Biden’s earlier statements, he recently claimed that the recent massacre did not cross any of his “red lines.” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday that “as a result of this strike on Sunday, I have no policy changes to speak to.”
“The Israelis are going to investigate it. We’re going to be taking great interest in what they find in that investigation. And we’ll see where it goes from there,” Kirby said.
Ahead of the mass mobilization, Layan Fuleihan of the People’s Forum said, “Biden has blood on his hands!” She added, “Genocide is a red line! Over 13,000 children murdered by Israel, is a red line! We will march in Washington D.C. to remind him that the people of this country refuse to be complicit in these war crimes!”
The mass demonstration on June 8 has been called by a diverse range of Palestinian diaspora formations as well as anti-imperialist groups. These include the Palestinian Youth Movement, National Students for Justice in Palestine, U.S. Palestinian Community Network, the People’s Forum, Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, Palestinian Feminist Collective, the ANSWER Coalition, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Arab Resource and Organizing Center, International Jewish Anti Zionist Network, Writers Against the War on Gaza, Healthcare Workers for Palestine, and Palestine Popular University.
“How many more homes have to be destroyed, how many children need to be killed, until this government takes definitive action to stop Israel’s war crimes. We are tired of hearing that Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are ‘concerned about the civilian death toll’. If they were really concerned about what Israel was doing, they would suspend all aid and tell Israel to accept one of the many ceasefire deals that is on the table. This genocide needs to end, and Biden has the power to do it,” said Celine Qussiny of the Palestinian Youth Movement.
“On June 8th, tens of thousands will show Biden that the people are his red line — we refuse to allow him to continue the genocide against the people of Gaza! Instead of a red line, Biden gave a green light to Netanyahu’s invasion of Rafah by agreeing to send more U.S. bombs and missiles. While the government that speaks in our name arms the genocidal Israeli regime to the teeth, the people want freedom for Palestine,” said Brian Becker, National Director of the ANSWER Coalition.
‘We need our politicians to set out how they will bring an end to this relentless reality of hardship in the general election campaign.’
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has called on all politicians to urgently address the reality of years-long hardship for families on low incomes.
The call was made following research conducted by the anti-poverty charity which found that the bottom 20 percent of low-income households are facing the same levels of hardship as they were last year, despite inflation falling.
The findings of the Savanta survey of 4,092 adults in the UK in low-income households were scaled by the JRF to population level.
From May 2022 to May 2024, the number of households going without essentials, such as showers, heating, and adequate clothing, ranged from 6.9 million to 7.3 million. Around 5 million households continue to go hungry, skip meals and cut back on food.
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On May 24, during his general election campaign launch in Scotland, Keir Starmer said the party will not be able to afford to scrap the two-child benefit cap if Labour wins the next general election.
The policy was introduced by the Tories in 2017, and prevents parents from claiming child tax credit or universal credit for third or subsequent children. It is said to be one of the biggest drivers of rising child poverty – up from 3.6 million children below the poverty line in 2010/11 to 4.2 million in 2021/22.
Starmer said that while he was committed to ending child poverty he would not make promises he couldn’t afford. The announcement caused disquiet among senior Labour politicians. Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, said he should promise that “when there is the headroom to do something, this clearly should be at the front of the queue.”
