UK Home Secretary to Introduce New Settlement Rules for Legal Migrants

Mahmood has argued that reforms are needed to prevent a drain on public finances.

In a foreword to the consultation, she said the UK’s entry threshold had been “significantly lowered”, a trend most evident in the health and care visa.

She wrote that an effort to fill between 6,000 and 40,000 jobs resulted in the arrival of 616,000 individuals between 2022 and 2024. Over half of those newcomers were not working in the sector themselves, but were dependants of the workers.

Home Office projections indicate that up to 196,000 care workers and their adult dependants could settle between 2026 and 2030, costing taxpayers an estimated £9.5 bn over a lifetime.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said on Monday that skilled workers and their dependants who are set to settle under current rules are projected to contribute a net £115 bn over their lifetimes through taxes.

Former Home Office minister Mike Tapp told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he hoped that those genuinely working in health and social care for five years would be exempt from a retrospective extension of the settlement waiting period. “We all know someone who has been cared for by these people, so that would be the right thing to do,” he added.

In June, Mahmood called for former Prime Minister Keir Starmer to dismiss Tapp after he authored an unauthorised article arguing that foreign care workers should be exempt from the proposed ILR changes.

Dr Ben Brindle, a senior researcher at Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, said the policy “probably won’t have too much impact” at a broader level on people’s decisions to come to the UK. “Immigration policy acts as more of a barrier than anything,” he told Today.

Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: “By Mahmood’s own admission in a March speech, allowing low‑wage care workers to stay permanently would cost taxpayers £10 bn and be an ‘affront’. She now appears to be about to do exactly that.”

Reform UK home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf said Mahmood had been “overruled” by Burnham, calling it “a disaster for Britain”. He added that Reform would abolish indefinite leave to remain (ILR) altogether.

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