Andy Burnham has stressed the need for Britain’s immigration laws to allow people to be hired from abroad to fill gaps in the labour force.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood was on Monday set to unveil the Government’s latest stance on legal migration. Ahead of her statement to the Commons, the Prime Minister highlighted the benefits of people arriving from overseas to work in the UK.
Migration Levels and Economic Needs
Asked if legal migration was too high in Britain, Mr Burnham told ITV Tonight: “Well, it's come right down.”
Pressed on the fact that the latest annual legal migration figure was 171,000, the PM added: “Yeah, it's come right down.
“And I think when you have planned migration, it's difficult to say is it too high or too low, because it's got to be, if you like, following gaps in the economy.
“Because if you just put a number on it, then we may have a shortage in a certain area, and then you’re saying well we can’t recruit people, it’s got to be linked to whether the economy is..”
He admitted, though, that the number of people crossing the Channel in “small boats” was too high. But he said that overall immigration was “in a much better place than it was”.
He added: “Boat crossings are down and net migration overall is down and down quite significantly.
“So there's a much better control of it.”
Planned Changes to Settlement Rules
Ms Mahmood was expected to water down some of the more controversial proposals on immigration drawn up when Sir Keir Starmer was Prime Minister, including increasing the five-year wait for claiming indefinite leave to remain (ILR) by up to 10 years for foreign care workers. She may exempt social care workers already in Britain.
Tensions in the Cabinet over the policy surfaced when Housing Secretary Angela Rayner earlier this year publicly attacked the prospect of backdating the plans. Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh, MP for Peckham, also repeatedly refused to say she backed proposals to prolong the qualifying period for settlement.
The Home Secretary initially set out the measures to delay settlement amid concerns over the wave of legal arrivals approaching eligibility in the wake of record post-Brexit net migration figures under the previous Tory government.
Reactions and Costs
The proposals drew more than 200,000 responses in a nearly year-long consultation.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp posted on X: “It’s clear Shabana Mahmood has been forced to surrender to Angela Rayner and the open-borders Labour left.
“She will now allow hundreds of thousands of low-wage and no-wage migrants to stay in the UK forever and claim benefits.”
In an immigration speech in March, Ms Mahmood said that between 2021 and 2024 the country experienced levels of migration it had previously seen across four decades. She raised particular concerns over arrivals via the health and social care visa, warning that without action, some 350,000 low-skilled workers and their dependants would qualify for settlement – and access to benefits – over the next five years.
This could come at a lifetime cost to the taxpayer of £10 billion, Ms Mahmood said, citing figures from the Migration Advisory Committee.
Her original proposals, unveiled in November 2025, would double the qualifying period for settlement for most migrants from five to 10 years, and potentially triple it to 15 for care workers. But they triggered a backlash from a large number of Labour MPs who have suggested the reforms are unfair, with Ms Rayner previously describing the prospect of applying the rules retrospectively to migrants already in the UK as “un-British”.
