Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has abandoned a proposal that would have required foreign care workers already in the UK to wait up to 15 years to qualify for permanent residency. Under the revised policy, care staff earning at least £25,000 annually who arrived in the country before May 2025 will retain the existing five-year path to settlement.
The initial plan, introduced last November, sought to address concerns over rising eligibility numbers following record net migration levels during the previous Conservative administration. The Home Office reported that net migration added 2.6 million people to the UK population between 2021 and 2024. Current projections estimate between 1.3 million and 2.2 million people will settle in the UK from 2026 to 2030, with a central estimate of 1.9 million.
Mahmood originally proposed extending the wait for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) from five years to 10 for most migrants, with some facing a 15-year requirement. This status allows individuals to live, work, and study in the UK indefinitely, access specific benefits, and eventually apply for British citizenship. Addressing the House of Commons, Mahmood maintained that settlement should be earned rather than treated as an automatic process. ILR, also known as settlement, gives a person the right to live, work and study in the UK for as long as they like and apply for benefits if they are eligible.
The proposed changes faced significant opposition from within the Labour Party. Housing Secretary Angela Rayner warned the retrospective application of these rules would change the goalposts, while several other Labour MPs condemned the policy as un-British, arguing it risked exacerbating existing skills shortages in the care sector.
The Conservative Party has criticized the government’s decision, labeling the policy reversal a U-turn that will ultimately cost taxpayers billions of pounds.
