A damning inspection report has found multiple failures in the Home Office’s system for awarding care worker visas, including 275 certificates of sponsorship granted to a care home without its knowledge and “using false information”.

The report found the whole regime of allowing care homes to sponsor visas to bring in workers from overseas was “shocking” in its implementation, and the net effect was “a system that invited large numbers of low-skilled workers to this country who are at risk from exploitation”.

The report was produced by David Neal, who was sacked as the chief inspector of borders and immigration last month after he was embroiled in a row with the government over concerns he was raising about the Home Office…

Neal’s report sets out “the consequences of the Home Office’s limited understanding of the social care sector, its underestimation of demand for the care worker visa, the inappropriateness of its sponsor licensing regime for low-skilled roles, and the mismatch between its meagre complement of compliance officers and ever-expanding register of licensed sponsors”.

The report said it was inappropriate to have copied a scheme that worked for largely compliant sectors and applied it to a high-risk area…