Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is facing scrutiny over changes to plans for legal migrants seeking indefinite leave to remain, amid a political debate centred on competing ideas of fairness.
Mahmood has linked her approach to her own family history: her parents came to the UK from rural Kashmir, and she now oversees reforms to the system that allowed them to settle. At the Labour Party conference in September, she said the rules had to be fair both to people seeking a better life and to those already in the UK, including British workers and young people.
The debate follows a period of high legal migration and growing prominence for Reform UK. Labour wants to demonstrate that it is responding to public concerns about the scale of arrivals, while opponents argue that revisions to the original proposals show political weakness or retreat.
Mahmood launched a consultation last November under the title “a fairer pathway to settlement”. Around 200,000 people responded, including approximately 140,000 visa holders, according to the report. A Whitehall source described the process as a substantial and genuine effort to shape the policy.
The original proposals followed Mahmood’s claim that net migration had increased by 2.6 million between 2021 and 2024. She warned that many recent arrivals would soon begin qualifying for indefinite leave to remain, with some lower-paid migrants and their non-working dependants potentially creating significant costs for the state.
One proposal was to establish a 15-year qualifying period for some migrants, rather than the usual five-year route under which people can generally become eligible for benefits and council housing after arriving. For groups that began arriving from 2022 onwards, the government said the effects of the existing rules could begin to emerge from 2027.
The plans drew criticism within Labour and beyond. Angela Rayner, now housing secretary, previously described them as “un-British”, arguing that migrants who had arrived under one set of rules could find their future determined by new requirements. Critics said this amounted to moving the goalposts after people had acted in good faith.
Mahmood also argued that the scale and nature of recent migration had been destabilising, citing an estimate that low-skilled migration could create a lifetime cost to taxpayers of £10bn. The figure has been disputed and placed in a broader context by the Institute for Public Policy Research, which said delaying care workers’ eligibility for settled status would reduce welfare costs but would not necessarily produce the claimed long-term saving.
The home secretary’s position nevertheless won some private support among senior Conservatives, while around 100 Labour MPs expressed public unease. In May, Andy Burnham said the government needed to get the balance right but that the broad direction of Mahmood’s policy was correct.
That distinction is expected to define the government’s revised approach. Conservatives are likely to describe the changes as an embarrassing U-turn and question whether they can withstand legal challenges if implemented without primary legislation. Mahmood, meanwhile, is expected to argue that the revisions are intended to produce a settlement policy that a wider range of people will regard as fair.
Sources: BBC News UK.