‘I have put her as your wife, so take her’: The fake families being smuggled into the UK
“I have put her as your wife, so take her.”
As Ratha, a Sri Lankan rice farmer, stood at Colombo Airport waiting for his ticket to the UK, the job recruiter gestured to a woman he had never seen before.
“Unless you go with her, you will have trouble and your money will not be returned,” he was told.
Ratha had paid this man – who he believed to be a recruitment “agent” – £50,000 for passage to the UK, selling property that had been in his family for generations.
But in being forced to pose as someone’s fake husband, he claims to have fallen victim to criminal gangs exploiting the UK’s skilled worker visa system.
While Rishi Sunak has made stopping English Channel small boat crossings one of his key priorities, Sky News can reveal allegations a legal route is being used for people smuggling.
Criminal gangs are using Britain’s need to fill jobs by using the skilled worker visa system as a route to move people to this country. Under the scheme, someone who has been offered a job in the UK is allowed to bring dependents with them.
But Sky News has been told about multiple cases where the entitlement to bring dependents on a skilled worker visa is being abused.
The hefty price tag
Ratha says he paid the money because he believed it would result in a job, and eventually, permanent residency in the UK.
The woman who pretended to be his wife – the owner of the work visa – has now disappeared.
He is staying with friends in Staffordshire because his relatives don’t want him to be alone, fearing for his mental health.
He claims he was fleeing persecution in Sri Lanka, and was unaware he would be travelling as a fake dependent on someone else’s work visa before he got to Colombo airport.
“I thought I was the only one travelling. At the entrance of the airport I was told to wait then a woman arrived,” says Ratha.
“The agent said: ‘I have put her as your wife, so take her’.”
At first, he refused to go along with the plan but he claims to have been threatened and refused a refund.
Hinthujan is now in Liverpool
The fake son
With Ratha came a 19-year-old, who says he pretended to be his son.
His name is Hinthujan and he’s now living in Liverpool. He cuts a fearful, lonely figure.
His family spent their life savings on his journey to the UK hoping he could join their relatives in the city’s Sri Lankan community.
Hinthujan says he had no idea what was happening until he got to Colombo Airport, where he was forced to partner with a fake father and mother.
Unable to speak a word of English, he is now an asylum seeker after the group were questioned and detained at Heathrow Airport.
“There are lots of problems going on in Sri Lanka. It is not possible to stay there – that is why we came,” he told Sky News via a translator.
“I was scared when [the agent] told me, ‘If you say they are your mother and father, there will be no problem’.”
He is now claiming asylum
‘I felt scared but couldn’t do anything’
When Mrs A turned up for her flight from Sri Lanka to the UK, she says the people she paid £65,000 to for a work visa handed over her permit, flight tickets – and a 12 year-old boy.
“It was a shock,” she says. “It was all last minute. I felt scared but couldn’t do anything about it. They guaranteed there wouldn’t be any problems.”
After they landed at Heathrow Airport, the boy was met by people Mrs A didn’t recognise and she never saw him again.
Mrs A – who asked not to be identified – said the visa was issued by the British High Commission in Sri Lanka.
“It was only after I arrived in the UK that I realised it was a big mistake. I know I’ve been used.
“The boy already knew he was coming into the country but I didn’t know.”
A fake document showing Mrs A had a ‘very good pass’ in an English language exam
The documents
Mrs A handed over the sum of money believing the agents would find her work in the UK – and that she didn’t need to speak English.
She was offered a job by a care company and then provided with a Certificate of Sponsorship by the Home Office enabling her visa. But it’s a basic requirement for people coming to work in the UK as carers on skilled worker visas to speak English.
Mrs A can’t read, write, or speak English and has no qualifications. But a fake certificate used by the gang to apply for a job lists her as having a “very good pass” in an English exam.
Sky News has obtained the false documents submitted to the care agency with her job application. They include a nursing diploma and fake certificates for biology, physics and chemistry.
Her fake CV boasts she spent seven years “providing direct nursing care to patients in a busy hospital ward environment” – and two years providing care to patients in a home for the elderly.
It says she’s skilled at safe patient handling and first aid.
None of this is true.
What are skilled worker visas – and how many are granted each year?
In February 2022, the Government changed the rules for those wanting to come to the UK to work, making it easier for those from abroad to apply.
It expanded the Shortage Occupation List and removed the requirement to prove that UK residents were unable to fill any listed roles. Care Support Worker is the lowest-skilled job on this expanded Shortage Occupations List.
The Migration Advisory Council’s annual report recommended the change, as well as setting a minimum salary of £20,480 per year.
The government agreed with this recommendation at the time “to help ensure short-term sustainability as social care builds back from the pandemic”.
Last year, almost 150,000 people came to the UK last year on skilled worker visas.
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‘People sell everything and end up with nothing’
Zeena Luchowa, from the Law Society Immigration Committee, said: “It’s extremely alarming and concerning that we have a system that is not catching exploitation at this level and there needs to be some way of the home office reviewing its systems to look at what’s not working here.”
Sky News contacted the firm Mrs A thought she was coming to work for. It said they had no idea the documents used for Mrs A’s application by the recruiters in Sri Lanka were fake.
Care England represents the largest number of independent adult social care providers in the UK. It confirmed that there is no “specific requirement” for any healthcare-related qualifications to come to this country as a carer. But it is a requirement to speak, read, write and understand English to at least an intermediate level.
Mrs A’s legal adviser said: “The British government needs people. But the criminal gangs use this work permit legal system for their own benefit to make a lot of money.”
Meanwhile, he said, people from other countries “sell their jewellery and property, give it to criminal gangs and end up with nothing. They come here and can’t work, can’t rent and end up on the street.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are actively investigating the claims made.
“Abuse of our immigration system will not be tolerated. Anyone who has used false documents, misrepresented their personal circumstances or practiced deception by any other means will have their application refused and may face a ban on making further applications for up to 10 years.”
The Home Office is now reviewing its processes to try to prevent future abuse of the skilled worker visa system.
Mrs A thought she was buying a safe and legal route into the UK
‘I sold everything three generations of my family worked for’
Vinothan is another Sri Lankan who has joined the UK’s backlog of asylum seekers. The job he thought he was coming to do didn’t work out.
Vinothan, his wife and two young children are now living in a friend’s spare room. He claims the family can’t return to Sri Lanka because they’ve been threatened by the criminal gangs who arranged their working visa to the UK.
He paid £26,000 to people in Sri Lanka for a full-time job offer to work as a carer at a British company – not the same one Mrs A applied for.
On induction day, Vinothan says he got a uniform but no paid work. He claims not to have been told before leaving Sri Lanka he would have to do unpaid training for an unspecified period of time.
As he is now in dispute with the company, his Certificate of Sponsorship to work in the UK has been withdrawn.
Vinothan’s family sold their life savings to send him to the UK
Wiping away tears, he explains that the money was his family’s entire life savings – after they sold everything, including land and jewellery.
“£26,000 is a very big amount for us from Sri Lanka. My grandfather’s and grandmother’s jewellery and three generations earned that. Now I don’t have anything. It’s all gone. [The criminal gangs in Sri Lanka] have cheated me.
“How can I get that back?”
Reporting by Lisa Holland
Production by Nick Stylianou and Megan Baynes
Edited by Serena Kutchinsky
UK
‘I have nightmares of dead bodies’: Patients dying and undiscovered for hours in hospital corridors
Patients are dying in corridors and going undiscovered for hours while the sick are left to soil themselves, nurses have said, revealing the scale of the corridor crisis inside the UK’s hospitals.
In a “harrowing” report built from the experiences of more than 5,000 NHS nursing staff, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) found almost seven in 10 (66.81%) say they are delivering care in overcrowded or unsuitable places, including converted cupboards, corridors and even car parks, on a daily basis.
Demoralised staff are looking after as many as 40 patients in a single corridor, unable to access oxygen, cardiac monitors, suction and other lifesaving equipment.
Women are miscarrying in corridors, while some nurses report being unable to carry out adequate CPR on patients having heart attacks.
Sara (not her real name) said she was on shift when a doctor told her there was a dying patient who had been waiting in the hospital’s corridor for six hours.
“It took a further two hours to get her into an adequate care space to make her clean and comfortable,” she told Sky News.
“That’s a human being, someone in the last hours of their life in the middle of a corridor with a detoxing patient vomiting and being abusive behind them and a very poorly patient in front of them, who was confused, screaming in pain. It was awful on the family, and it was awful on the patient.”
Dead patients ‘not found for hours’
A nurse working in the southeast of England quit her job after witnessing an elderly lady in “animal-like conditions”.
She told the RCN: “A 90-year-old lady with dementia was scared, crying and urinating in the bed after asking several times for help to the toilet. Seeing that lady, frightened and subjected to animal-like conditions is what broke me.
“At the end of that shift, I handed in my notice with no job to go to. I will not work where this is a normal day-to-day occurrence.”
Another nurse in the South East said a patient died in a corridor and “wasn’t discovered for hours”.
Sara told Sky another woman needed resuscitating after the oxygen underneath her trolley ran out. Sara was one of just two nurses caring for more than 30 patients on that corridor.
“I have had nightmares – I have a nightmare that I walk out in the corridor and there are dead bodies in body bags on the trolleys,” she said, growing visibly emotional.
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No electricity to plug in computers
One nurse, who spoke to Sky News, said the conditions were “undignified” and “inhumane”.
“It’s not just corridors – we utilise chairs, cupboards, whatever space is available in the hospital to be repurposed into a care space, in the loosest sense of that term. These spaces are unsafe.”
Some spaces, she said, don’t even have basic electricity for nurses to plug in their computers.
The nurse, who spoke to Sky on the condition of anonymity, said she has experienced burnout multiple times over the state of her workplace.
“I have come to the conclusion this week I don’t think I can continue working in the NHS or as a nurse,” she said.
“It breaks my soul; I love what I do when I am able to do it in the right way. I like caring for people, I like making people better, I also like providing a dignified death.”
She added: “I want to look after the institution I was born into, but for the sake of my family and my mental health, I don’t know how much more I can give.”
With 32,000 nursing vacancies in England alone, data also shows around one in eight nurses leave the profession within five years of qualifying.
Nurses are being forced to provide care in hospital corridors and car parks. Pic: PA
Staff ‘not proud of the care they are giving’
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) says the testimony, which runs to over 400 pages, must mark a “moment in time”. In May 2024, the RCN declared a “national emergency” over corridor care in NHS services.
Professor Nicola Ranger, RCN general secretary and chief executive, said: “At the moment, [nursing staff] are not proud of the care they are giving.”
“We hear stories of escalation areas and temporary beds that have been open for two years,” she added. “That is no longer escalation, it’s understaffed and underfunded capacity that is pretty shocking care for patients. We have to get a grip on that.”
Read more: Hospital advertises for corridor nurse amid NHS winter crisis
She called the situation “a disgrace”, citing abuse of staff as another reason for people leaving the profession in droves.
Last week, a nurse was left with “life-changing injuries” after being stabbed by a man while at work.
“The NHS used to be the envy of the world and we need to take a long hard look at ourselves and say ‘what needs to change?’
“The biggest concern for us is that the public Is starting to lose a little faith in their care, and that has to stop. We absolutely have to sort this out.”
Commenting on the RCN’s report, Duncan Burton, chief nursing officer for England, said the NHS had experienced one of the “toughest winters” in recent months, and the report “should never be considered the standard to which the NHS aspires”.
“Despite the challenges the NHS faces, we are seeing extraordinary efforts from staff who are doing everything they can to provide safe, compassionate care every day,” he added. “As a nurse, I know how distressing it can be when you are unable to provide the very best standards of care for patients.”
Have you experienced corridor care in an NHS hospital? Get in touch on NHSstories@sky.uk
Singer Linda Nolan, who rose to fame alongside her sisters in The Nolans, has died after several years of battling cancer.
The Irish star, 65, and her sisters Coleen, Maureen, Bernie, Denise and Anne, had a run of hits in the late 1970s and ’80s – including the disco classic I’m In The Mood For Dancing.
Paying tribute on The Nolans‘ X account, her sisters described her as “a pop icon and beacon of hope”, who “faced incurable cancer with courage, grace and determination, inspiring millions”.
Linda died peacefully in hospital this morning, “embraced with love and comfort” with her siblings by her side, her agent Dermot McNamara said in a statement.
“As a member of The Nolans, one of the most successful girl groups of all time, Linda achieved global success; becoming the first Irish act to sell over a million records worldwide, touring the world and selling over 30 million records,” he said.
“Her distinctive voice and magnetic stage presence brought joy to fans around the world, securing her place as an icon of British and Irish entertainment.”
As well as her TV and musical career, Linda helped to raise more than £20 million for numerous charities, including Breast Cancer Now, Irish Cancer Society, Samaritans and others.
“Her selflessness and tireless commitment to making a difference in the lives of others will forever be a cornerstone of her legacy,” Mr McNamara said.
Five of the Nolans in 1983 (L-R): Linda, Anne, Bernie, Coleen and Maureen. Pic: PA
Linda’s death came after she was admitted to hospital with pneumonia over the weekend. She began receiving end-of-life care after slipping into a coma on Tuesday.
Details of a celebration of the star’s “remarkable life” will be shared in due course.
Linda was born to Tommy and Maureen Nolan in Dublin on 23 February 1959, the sixth of eight children.
Her parents were both singers and keen to turn their young family into a musical troupe. Linda made her stage debut aged just four.
Those early years put the siblings on track for a career in show business which lasted for decades. As well as I’m In The Mood For Dancing, The Nolans had hits with Gotta Pull Myself Together, Attention To Me and Don’t Make Waves, and they also had their own TV specials.
At their height, they toured with Frank Sinatra and were reported to have outsold The Beatles in Japan.
Linda left the group in 1983, but later reformed with her sisters for several comeback performances. She also became known for musical theatre, most notably performing the role of Mrs Johnstone in Blood Brothers for three years from 2000.
L-R: Bernie, Denise, Linda (top), Anne and Maureen Nolan pictured in 1975, before youngest sister Coleen joined the group
Four siblings struck by cancer
Linda was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, and underwent a mastectomy two days before her 47th birthday.
After being given the all-clear in 2011, in 2017 she was diagnosed with secondary breast cancer. Three years later, Linda and Anne together revealed they were being treated for cancer once again.
The sisters were diagnosed with different forms of the disease just days apart after they returned home from filming a series of their show, The Nolans Go Cruising. Linda had cancer of the liver, while Anne had breast cancer.
The star, pictured last year, had battled cancer for several years. Pic: Shutterstock
They went on to write Stronger Together, an account of their journey that included frank details of their treatments and the side effects.
But in 2023, Linda revealed the cancer had spread to her brain and she was beginning treatment as part of a new drug trial.
The Nolans lost their second-youngest sister, Bernie, to cancer in 2013, aged 52.
Loose Women star Coleen Nolan also revealed she was diagnosed with skin cancer last year, and said she was using a chemotherapy cream to remove it.
Linda’s husband of 26 years, Brian Hudson, died in 2007 after being diagnosed with skin cancer.
Anne Nolan is now cancer-free.
Tributes to star ‘who was always a joy’
TV star and singer Cheryl Baker and comedian Tommy Cannon are among those who have paid tribute.
“I’m heartbroken to hear about the passing of Linda Nolan,” Cannon wrote on X. “I had the pleasure of working with her on so many occasions, and she was always a joy – full of warmth and love. My thoughts and love are with the Nolan girls and the whole family.”
“The most incredible voice, the wickedest sense of humour, such a massive talent,” Baker wrote. “You’re with Brian now, Lin.”
Loose Women also sent its love to her family. Linda appeared as a guest panellist on the ITV chat show over the years, alongside her sister Coleen.
The Blackpool Grand Theatre described her as “a true Blackpool icon”.
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