Chris Philp says the home secretary is giving in to ‘open-borders Labour left’ ahead of an announcement this afternoon The King’s Fund , a health thinktank, is warning that Shabana Mahmood is planning to tighten the residency rules for foreign workers when the number of overseas care workers being recruited is already on course to fall to 10,000 a year. And this is happening as vacancies in the sector increase, it says in its analysis . It explains: Overseas care worker recruitment is falling from its high point of 105,000 in 2023/24 to 30,000 in 2025/26, with it trending to fall to 10,000 in 2026/27. In 2025/26 there were 1.02 million filled direct care independent sector posts and 65,000 vacancies. Vacancy rates in the social care sector are above average when compared with others. Alongside a decline in the number of international recruits, the number of new domestic workers starters