Both the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Border Security Minister Anna Turley have in the last 24 hours refused to back Andy Burnham’s quiet campaign to resurrect EU freedom of movement. A wide open split at the top of government; collective responsibility is optional these days…
Last night Mahmood told Sam Coates:
“What I am keen on is abiding by our manifesto… I have views which are a matter of public record… you can go and read and have trawl through what I think.”
She even said she didn’t want to “indulge” questions about it. Does this include at the Cabinet table?
This morning Anna Turley said similarly:
“My priority is sorting out the system we’ve got… We’ve been very clear in manifesto we won’t be having free movement in this country.”
Yet the rejoiners in Labour really want to fight these battles all over again…
Care workers: U-turn by Mahmood. They can still apply for settlement after 5 years if they earn at least £25,000, rather than facing the 15-year wait proposed in the consultation.
3 years: top-rate taxpayers on more than £125,141, plus Global Talent and Innovator Founder visa holders.
5 years: higher-rate taxpayers on more than £50,271, public sector professionals such as doctors, nurses and teachers, and refugees who came on safe and legal routes.
10 years: the new default for everyone else, including refugees who go into work or study. They must prove a steady record of contribution.
20 years: anyone who claims certain benefits or breaks visa rules.
Shabana Mahmood is set to water down her flagship settlement reforms after a revolt from Labour MPs and the Cabinet. The Home Secretary is set to care workers like doctors and nurses, letting them “earn” time off their wait for indefinite leave to remain by working in the public sector. Tough talk lasted a year…
Under Mahmood’s original plans, set out last November, most skilled workers would wait ten years for ILR rather than five, while the lowest paid, including care workers, would wait 15. Now a care worker with five years of public sector service can knock five years off that wait. That covers 117,000 low-paid care workers and their 79,000 dependants…
Angela Rayner has claimed victory over Mahmood after she led efforts against the changes. More than 100 Labour backbenchers and the major unions also lined up to oppose them.
Exempting care workers entirely could cost the taxpayer almost £10 billion. ILR unlocks benefits, and every low-paid care worker’s net lifetime fiscal contribution is calculated to be minus £36,000, rising to minus £67,000 for their dependants. Clue: they aren’t care workers for long…
Mahmood will announce her package of reforms tomorrow. Game over for Labour talk on immigration control…
Ex-Conservative Justice Secretary Alex Chalk is leading the review, with an initial report expected within five months.
Miatta Fahnbulleh was asked about whether she supported Shabana Mahmood’s immigration reforms on Sky News and said:
“Look, we absolutely need to reform our immigration system. I support the reforms and by the way, it is not easy to reform our immigration system. So, I 100% back uh Shabana Mahmood and everything she’s trying to do, but there are a package of reforms. We are consulting in the way that government always does and the Home Secretary rightly having looked at all the responses to the consultation will set out the final package that ultimately will do the job of reforming our immigration system based on the principle of control which we absolutely must do. But critically, a system that ensures that people make a contribution and when they make a contribution, they are integrated into our communities so that we can have diverse communities like my one in Peckham in which people can live together and can ensure that they are making the contribution to get to the country and the society that we want to.”
There was a long back and forth. Mahmood is proposing to increase the length of time migrants have to wait before being granted Indefinite Leave to Remain. Boilerplate proposal and one which has already slammed against the Labour wall…
Mail commentator Dan Hodges – who was kind to Burnham during the Makerfield campaign – now concludes: “The truth is Andy Burnham doesn’t have a 10 year plan. He’s barely got a 10 week plan.“