British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is set to announce on Monday her final decision on tougher rules for migrants seeking permanent settlement, with indications that she may soften the plan for many social care workers.
Her proposal would double the standard wait for settlement from five years to 10. Some lower-paid migrants would face 15 years, including many low-wage social care workers who now qualify after five.
The sharpest objections targeted her plan to apply the longer waits to migrant workers already living in Britain. Housing Secretary Angela Rayner said that would amount to moving the goalposts, and several Labour MPs called the retroactive approach un-British and warned it could deepen staff shortages in care.
The proposals are likely to be revised for most people currently employed in social care. The Conservatives accused Mahmood of surrendering control of immigration policy to Rayner, while Reform UK's Zia Yusuf said she had been overruled by Prime Minister Andy Burnham and pledged that his party would scrap settlement entirely.
Mahmood is expected to deliver the decision in a statement to MPs in the House of Commons.
Settlement, formally called indefinite leave to remain, lets a person live, work and study in Britain without time limits, claim benefits where eligible and apply for citizenship.
Why the government wants change
Mahmood moved to lengthen the wait over concern about how many people are nearing eligibility after record net migration following Brexit under the previous Conservative government. Home Office figures show net migration added 2.6 million people to the population from 2021 to 2024, and the department projects that about 1.6 million could settle between 2026 and 2030.
Mahmood has said the changes are needed to avoid a drain on public finances. She wrote that the health and care visa drew 616,000 arrivals from 2022 to 2024 to fill between 6,000 and 40,000 jobs, and that more than half were dependants rather than workers.
Home Office calculations estimated that 196,000 care workers and adult dependants could settle between 2026 and 2030, at a lifetime cost to taxpayers of £9.5 billion. The Institute for Public Policy Research countered on Monday that skilled workers and dependants due to settle under current rules would make a net lifetime contribution of about £115 billion in taxes.
The consultation, launched under former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, drew more than 200,000 responses.
Political reaction
Burnham said last week that settlement should be earned rather than handed out automatically, adding that legal migration has fallen sharply and that planned migration should track gaps in the economy rather than a fixed number.
Former Home Office minister Mike Tapp urged an exemption for those who have worked five years in health and social care. In June, Mahmood had asked Starmer to fire Tapp after he wrote an unauthorized article making the same argument.
We've all known someone in our family or friends who has been cared for by these people, so that would be the right thing to do.
Mike Tapp, former Home Office minister
Ben Brindle, a migration researcher at Oxford's Migration Observatory, said the policy probably would not do much overall to shape people's decisions to come to Britain.
We need an immigration system that supports our economy, public services and integration – but the home secretary's reforms will undermine that.
Max Wilkinson, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp noted that Mahmood herself had put the cost of letting low-wage care workers stay permanently at £10 billion and accused her of preparing to allow it anyway. Liberal Democrat spokesman Max Wilkinson said the reforms would undermine the economy, public services and integration.
