Mahmood to Set Out Settlement Rules With Care Workers Spared
The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, will present her final decision on indefinite leave to remain to Parliament this week. The BBC understands social care workers already in Britain are likely to be exempt from a longer wait, while most other workers would need ten years rather than five before qualifying for settlement.
The original proposal would have made some lower-paid migrants wait fifteen years and applied the change to people already here, which Angela Rayner, before rejoining the Cabinet as housing secretary, called “un-British”. The consultation drew 200,000 responses. The ten-year wait could be shortened for those with higher incomes or who contribute to their communities. The Home Office will not comment until the statement is made, so the details remain briefed rather than announced, and no start date has been given. The concession on care workers matters because the sector relies heavily on overseas recruits: a fifteen-year wait would have weighed on retention in a service already stretched.