SOCIAL care leaders felt blindsided by recently announced changes to visa rules banning care workers from bringing their families to Britain, MPs heard today.

Care England chief executive Professor Martin Green said they have grave concerns that the government’s move could drive people from the sector.

He criticised a lack of consultation with the sector, saying it left leaders “particularly concerned, annoyed and irritated.”

Prof Green told Parliament’s health & social care committee the system is already creaking at the edges due to a lack of funding and spoke of the chronic workforce shortage it faces.

Health Secretary Victoria Atkins told the same committee last week that the social care sector was “broadly relaxed” about the changes on dependants.

But Skills for Care chief executive Oonagh Smyth told the committee today that “international recruits have significantly contributed to workforce capacity” in the year to April 2023.

She said that more must be done to build a domestic workforce if international recruitment is cut.

Unison union head of social care Gavin Edwards told the Morning Star: “Anyone trying to make it harder for the essential workers the social care sector relies on to come to this country has no understanding of the care system and the pressure it is under.

“Ministers are simply playing to the gallery. They have not even consulted with the people who will have to try and pick up the pieces of this disastrous policy.

“There is no army of domestic workers waiting in the wings to provide the skilled care services required.”

He called on the government to properly fund the sector and raise wages for it to be more attractive to workers.

“But take away the migrant workers currently stopping care from going under and the whole system collapses,” he said.