Exploitative Contracts for Foreign Care Workers in the UK

According to Kiran Stacey, reporting in The Guardian, there has been a sixfold increase in the past three years in the number of complaints by foreign care workers that they are trapped in exploitative contracts.  The number of such complaints is still small (134), but the nature of the exploitation is an interesting sign of the times. Working on what seems like an analogy to Training Reimbursement Agreement Provisions (TRAPs), employers are demanding large payments to cover "hiring costs,"  as high as £10,000, when workers try to leave their jobs.  

One consequence of Brexit was that it suddenly because much harder to find social care workers.  The Tory government tried to stop the bleeding with a band-aid, making it easier for foreign workers to serve in the sector, and the number of foreign workers increased from 10,000 to 94,000.  The sector grew too quickly for the government to monitor all of the practices involved.  According to The Guardian, "The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority reported that it received 123 reports of modern slavery and human trafficking in the care sector in 2023 and that the sector accounted for more than half of all reports of forced labour."

I wish the story had provided some examples of the contractual language at issue. Does the contract have language indicating that there is an obligation to reimburse "hiring costs" in cases of early termination of the contract?  That is a tricky issue. I don't know what UK law has to say about the enforceability of such provisions.  If there is no provision and employers are using threats of deportation to extort payments, that seems much more clearly unlawful.