Here’s what Shabana’s Mahmood said in a speech on 5th March.
“[We will] address the challenge posed by the impending settlement of the hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers and their dependants… Who arrived between 2022 and 2024. That means applying any rule changes to those who are in the UK today… But have not yet received settled status. If we do not, we will see a £10 billion pound drain on our public finances… And further strain on public services – like housing and healthcare - already under immense pressure. That is an affront to the idea of fairness within our society.”
Absent action, over the next 5 years some 350,000 low-skilled workers and their dependents will qualify for settlement. At that point, they will gain access to welfare, free healthcare and social housing. We must be honest about the scale of this.
We estimate, based on findings from the Migration Advisory Committee… That the lifetime cost to the taxpayer will be £10 billion. That figure would be paid for by working people in this country. It would mean ever longer waits for the 1.3 million people in this country on the social housing list… And yet more pressure placed upon our National Health Service. It is an affront to the idea of fairness within our migration system.”
And yet and yet, here she is, announcing the climbdown which she herself would be so damaging. Instead of her announced plans to increase the time people have to live in the UK to get Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) to ten years, today she announced that for huge numbers of people it will remain at 5 years.
How we got here
Just as a reminder, the reason Mahmood promised these reforms is that the huge numbers that arrived - particularly on low wage routes like the social care visa will become eligible for ILR during this parliament - five years after they arrived. The numbers eligible for ILR are effectively a shadow of the previous numbers arriving.
The blue area below is the number on the Health and Care visa - note that the majority of those who came on this visa were actually dependents, not main applicants.
Out of the 763,600 people who came on this route from 2022 to Summer 2026 most (470,800) were dependents. This is one of many reasons I have been so critical of it over the years.
Following Mahmood’s climbdown today these people will now be eligible to get ILR - which means they can get benefits and council housing - just five years after they arrived. To visualise that, I have shown the pink “shadow” below, which will ramp up later this parliament, putting even greater upward pressure on welfare spending.
The Migration Advisory Committee has said that the net lifetime cost to the taxpayer is likely to be £36,000 per care worker and £67,000 for each of their adult dependants. There are reasons to think this is too low, but still, everyone agrees there is a cost.
How the climbdown works
Mahmood said this afternoon that there will be two groups:
A first group (covering three quarters of care visas) who will get:
“a five- year path to settlement for care workers who lived up to the promise they made on coming to this country, worked hard, and answered our call when we needed them. Those who earned £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 5-year path.”
And a second group who:
“who have not fulfilled the conditions of their visa, represent around a quarter of those who came between 2022 and 2025. We will offer them a second chance to make the contribution they came to this country to make.”
There is something amazing about saying people “have not fulfilled the conditions of their visa” - but can stay anyway.
The climbdown will actually go wider and further than predicted, and will include other people who have at some point done lower paid jobs in the education or health:
Workers in healthcare and education occupations below RQF6 that are on a national pay scale for the purposes of the Immigration Rules, such as nursing auxiliaries and teaching assistants, will retain a five-year route to settlement if they came to the UK before the May 2025 Immigration White Paper publication.
They will also extend the deadline for others who don’t earn enough to meet the new visa rules set out by the last government:
Changes under the previous government in 2024 substantially increased the Skilled Worker salary threshold, with transitional arrangements for workers already in the route to extend their stay under the previous salary thresholds. At that time, these transitional arrangements were given a sunset date of 2030, designed to give workers a reasonable chance to complete their five-year qualifying period for settlement. But with the qualifying period for settlement extended to 10 years for workers in roles below RQF6 (and who are not subject to other exemptions), we will provide a transitional arrangement for this cohort so they can extend their visas on their current terms until 2035.
What’s the impact?
In November 2025 in “A Fairer Pathway to Settlement” the Home Office said:
While significant uncertainty exists over the future behaviour of potential applicants, the Home Office estimates that between 1.3 million and 2.2 million people will settle in the UK between 2026 and 2030 (central estimate 1.6m), peaking at between 359,000 and 620,000 in 2028 (central estimate 450,000).
Now in today’s document it says that:
The Home Office still estimates that between 2026 and 2030 between 1.3 million and 2.2 million people will settle in the UK. The central estimate is now 1.9 million
Annex A in today’s document sets out the new forecast, and the chart below puts the forecast numbers in in context: this forecast will mean the largest number of people given permanent settlement of any parliament on record:
Conclusion
Mahmood is now in an extraordinary position. She has
Made a powerful case against dropping the ILR reforms - but been forced to announce just that.
Agreed to increase immigration in eight different ways - in a doomed attempt to fend of the very concessions she has now announced.
Mahmood is in office, but not in power.
She has posed as the government’s tough cookie, but been overruled by the PM, and steamrollered by welfare obsessed Labour MPs.
Even she must now be wondering why she’s still there.
How depressing. I thought Shabana Mahmood was one of the few Labour politicians that had some integrity but it appears not. Clearly none of them care about the future consequences to this country, only how good they feel about themselves now. It's kind of amazing the degree of open treachery they display, seemingly without shame or embarrassment.
My wife is an immigrant who I met at university. Now a solicitor and a high rate tax payer who only after their tenth year will be eligible for ILR. She will never claim any of these benefits and we had to spend tens of thousands of pounds on visas. What an insult given the amount of scrutiny we have had to endure from the home office and how much we have paid