Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has revised her plans to make foreign care workers wait up to 15 years for settlement, following criticism from senior Labour figures.
Under the initial proposals, lower-qualified workers who arrived on health and social care visas during the “Boriswave” from 2022 could have been made to wait 15 years for permanent settlement. Under the revised plans, foreign care workers who meet their visa conditions and earn at least £25,000 a year will now only have to wait five years, Ms Mahmood told the Commons.
Cabinet Tensions and Revised Terms
Foreign care workers who do not qualify for the five-year settlement will be able to apply for a new five-year visa, and then apply for settlement once it has been completed. Tensions in the Cabinet over the policy surfaced when Housing Secretary Angela Rayner earlier this year publicly attacked the prospect of backdating the plans. Then Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh repeatedly refused to say she backed proposals to prolong the qualifying period for settlement.
Elsewhere, Ms Mahmood confirmed she would introduce the plan for refugees who arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel by small boat to wait 20 years for settlement, rising to 30 years if they do not enter work or study. Also under the plans, the right to settled status will no longer be automatic and must be earned.
New Settlement Tiers and Requirements
The highest earners (earning at least £125,141 a year) will be able to settle within three years, while those earning more than £50,271 and some public service workers, including doctors, nurses and teachers, will be able to settle after five years. Others will settle at a new default of 10 years, Ms Mahmood added.
Anyone seeking settled status will need a clean criminal record, English spoken to the equivalent of A-level English as a foreign language, must not owe debt to the taxpayer, and must have a record of sustained national insurance contributions, the Home Secretary has said. She told the Commons “everyone will have a fair shot to make their contribution”, and accused the Conservatives of losing control of migration with “significant abuse of the care route”.
Reactions and Impact
The Home Secretary said the Government would address this by “providing a five-year path to settlement for care workers who lived up to the promise that they made on coming to this country – worked hard and answered our call when we needed them”. She added: “Those who earn £25,000 a year working in the social care sector, which was the condition of their visa, will therefore be able to settle on their existing five-year path.”
Ms Mahmood said those who did not meet the conditions of their visa would be offered “a second chance to make the contribution that they came to this country to make”. She added: “They will be able to apply for another five-year care visa, and they will not be tied to their old employer, allowing those with rogue sponsors to break away from them.” Ms Mahmood said workers will be helped to find new positions, adding: “Everyone will have a fair shot to make their contribution, and no-one will be punished for the sins of their employer, but we will also preserve the critical element of this reform: that settlement must be linked to contribution.”
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp described Ms Mahmood’s announcement as “a U-turn” and claimed it would cost the taxpayer £10 billion. He told the Commons: “A Home Office document which (Ms Mahmood) published on March 5, said that social care workers alone, because they work on lower wages and have brought in many dependents, will actually cost the taxpayer £10 billion.” He added: “The Home Secretary now proposes to allow every single care worker and their dependents who arrived prior to May 2025, a number running into hundreds of thousands, to stay in this country beyond the expiry of their visa and, in the case of 75% of them, to stay permanently, even though she acknowledges that many of them arrived fraudulently. That is the cost of today’s U-turn – £10 billion.”
Nigel Farage branded the decision “the beginning of the capitulation”. The Reform UK leader added: “That it is a very major U-turn in the position of the Home Secretary is clear, that it will cost this country a vast amount of money is clear.” Labour MP Diane Abbott meanwhile warned the Home Secretary is at risk of creating a another Windrush scandal. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said it was “only fair that those who are making the most valuable contribution to our communities are given the opportunity to settle earlier”.
Simon Bottery, a senior fellow at The King’s Fund think tank welcomed the change of approach and said: “This is an important recognition of the crucial role migrant workers play in maintaining the social care services people and families rely on. It was also unfair to invite people to come and work in social care only to change the terms on which they came to the UK after they had arrived.” Kamena Dorling of the Helen Bamber Foundation charity said: “Extending the qualifying period for settlement to 20 years for refugees who have not arrived through a safe and legal route, with a further ten years for those deemed to have entered through an ‘illegal’ method, is simply inhumane. This will not deter people fleeing war, persecution, torture and violence, who are fighting for their lives and seeking safety in the UK.”
Indefinite leave to remain (ILR), also known as settlement, is an immigration status that allows a person to live, work and study in the UK indefinitely and apply for benefits if they are eligible. More than 200,000 responses were submitted to the consultation on Ms Mahmood’s initial proposals.
