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Rayner condemns Mahmood's migrant visa crackdown on eve of Labour conference

Angela Rayner has publicly condemned Shabana Mahmood's plan to lengthen foreign care workers' route to settlement, accusing the government of changing the goalposts.

By Sarah Whitfield · · 1 min read

Official portrait of Angela Rayner
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Angela Rayner has publicly condemned Shabana Mahmood’s plan to make it harder for foreign workers to claim permanent residence, saying the policy is unfair because it would “change the goalposts”.

In an interview with The Times published on Saturday, the housing, communities and local government secretary said the reforms would hit foreign care workers who had “moved their lives here to look after our loved ones”.

Ms Rayner stood by the criticism she voiced before rejoining the government under Andy Burnham, when she described the plan as “un-British”. Asked whether she had raised the issue with the home secretary directly, she said: “I think Shabana knows. It was in the newspaper at the time. I’ve not changed my view on that.”

The reforms would extend the qualifying period for permanent residence from five years to 15 for social care workers on health and care visas, applying retrospectively to those who have arrived since 2021.

More than 100 Labour MPs and trade unions oppose the plan, which is expected to dominate Mr Burnham’s first party conference as prime minister, beginning this weekend in Merseyside. Mr Burnham is said to share her concerns and is considering exempting foreign care workers already in Britain from the crackdown.

Labour backbencher Rachael Maskell told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme she expected Ms Mahmood to scrap the changes, calling them “the wrong set of values”. Culture secretary Lisa Nandy, on the same programme, insisted the reforms were not “un-British” and that there had never been “an automatic right to citizenship for most people who come to the UK from overseas”.

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More on this topic: all UK Broadband stories

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