Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has been accused by a senior union boss of fuelling the far-right with her plans to crack down on migrant workers’ right to settle in the UK.
Andrea Egan, general secretary of the Unison union, which is one of Labour’s biggest financial backers, accused the Home Secretary of “dehumanising” migrants, especially care workers, by making them wait longer to get the right to live in the UK permanently.
Mahmood is facing a major Labour revolt over her plans to double the default qualifying time – from five to 10 years – that immigrant workers must live in the UK before getting indefinite leave to remain (ILR).
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The rebellion was fuelled further by Communities Secretary Angela Rayner breaking Cabinet ranks on the eve of Labour’s conference in Liverpool, saying that applying the new rules to foreign workers already in the UK would “change the goalposts”, having previously described the plans as “un-British”.
Mahmood’s tough reforms have been widely viewed as an attempt by Labour to neutralise the political threat from Reform UK by demonstrating a harder line on migration.
Egan piled further pressure on the Home Secretary in an interview with The i Paper on Sunday, urging Mahmood to drop her plan to apply the longer wait for settlement to workers already in the UK.
She warned that care workers would be among the hardest hit by Mahmood’s reforms, which would force them to wait 15 years for indefinite leave to remain. The proposals would lengthen the path to settlement for people in “low-skilled” jobs, while shortening it for higher-skilled workers.
Unison has previously called for the crackdown to be scrapped after analysis suggested British workers were not filling vacancies left by fewer migrant staff in the care sector, where there are staff shortages and around 96,000 job vacancies.
Egan warned that Andy Burnham’s plan to “fix” social care would not bear fruit without reversing the plans.
A former care worker herself, Egan said she had seen the “value” of migrant care workers, who want to come to the UK and “contribute”.
“There were people that were just wanting to do a good job, get a decent wage, and live,” she said.
“And we should be celebrating that, not dehumanising it. It’s absolutely unacceptable.”
The Unison general secretary went further: “I think Shabana Mahmood’s proposals have fuelled the far-right, and I think some of that is because people are feeling… communities… they’re angry.
“They feel let down in politics, and they want somebody to blame. So that’s it. It’s easy to blame the migrant workers.
“Well, I’m sorry, we’ve got to do a lot more to promote and show and demonstrate their value and who they are.”
She also hit out at the rise of the far right, saying recent scenes of “hooded gangs” on the streets were “terrifying”.
Egan added: “What’s more terrifying, that or an Asian or a black nurse looking after you, in your hour of need?”
Hundreds of thousands of care workers and their dependents have arrived in the UK on health and care visas since 2021. Many will soon become eligible for indefinite leave to remain, unless Mahmood pushes ahead with plans to apply her crackdown retrospectively.
The move is aimed at addressing concerns that record post-Covid migration levels under the Conservatives could lead to large numbers of migrants settling in the UK permanently.
Mahmood is believed to be considering a concession due to the sheer number of Labour MPs who are against the plans. Egan urged her to “do the right thing” and backtrack in her Labour conference speech on Monday.
Egan said care workers were invited to Britain under the Tory government to help tackle severe staff shortages in health and social care, with many selling possessions, borrowing money and uprooting their families on the understanding they could gain indefinite leave to remain after five years.
“They look after our loved ones, you know, our parents, our grandparents, our aunts, our uncle.”
At a conference fringe event, Immigration minister Jo White defended the reforms, arguing that around 600,000 social care workers could get indefinite leave to remain after five years, then choose to leave the sector, worsening the staffing crisis.
“I don’t want us to get into that spiral where people move out of the care sector because they’ve got [indefinite] leave to remain,” she said. “And this is what we hear from people coming from other countries, that they’re here to work, but they then want to go on to other things.”
Rayner said she would not get into a row with Mahmood over the plans, and that she was sure she would come to a “good conclusion”. The final shape of the reforms is due this autumn.