A Government that promised control of Britain’s borders has retreated on a significant part of its own immigration reforms after sustained opposition from its own benches, and has yet to publish what that retreat costs the taxpayer.
On Monday the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, told the Commons that care workers who entered or switched into the route before May 2025 and met their visa conditions, including the applicable salary, would keep a five-year path to indefinite leave to remain. Under the consultation she opened twelve months ago, those same workers faced fifteen years.
No revised financial assessment has been published. The Government’s own consultation response says the full assessment will follow “as we implement the reforms”. The first changes are not due until the December Immigration Rules and would be phased in across 2027. None of this is in force.
Great British PAC is demanding that the Home Secretary publish the revised assessment before those Rules are laid, explain what evidence changed her mind, and confirm precisely how many people will benefit.
Labour’s U-Turn, the Unpublished Bill
The scale is not secret. The consultation response puts the care worker cohort at 196,000 workers and 186,000 dependants. It estimates that around 146,000 workers and 136,000 dependants will keep the five-year route, with a further 50,000 of each moving onto a longer path. Those are illustrative forecasts, not confirmed outcomes, but they are the Government’s own.
Nor is the money hidden, only its meaning. The department’s March analysis put the lifetime net cost of the care workers expected to settle between 2026 and 2030, with their adult dependants, at £9.5bn, or about £10bn. That is a lifetime projection for a cohort, not a bill for Monday’s decision. Great British PAC does not claim otherwise, and it is exactly why a fresh assessment is required.
A proper assessment would need to weigh benefit eligibility, employment and earnings, tax receipts, public service costs and settlement behaviour. The Government has not published a revised calculation showing how the new timetable would affect the public finances.
A policy rewritten under pressure
The political sequence is the story. The original proposals drew opposition from more than 100 Labour backbenchers, alongside major unions and several senior ministers, including the Housing Secretary, Angela Rayner, who described retrospective changes as “un-British”.
The Home Office’s own projections show what followed. The original plan would have delayed 799,000 people from reaching settlement. The revised plan puts that figure at 517,000, a reduction of approximately 282,000 in the number facing a longer wait, according to the Government’s forecasts. Some 1.9 million people are still expected to settle between 2026 and 2030.
The Home Secretary has given reasons. She argues that care workers answered the country’s call during the pandemic, that those who kept to their visa conditions deserve recognition, and that rogue sponsors rather than workers were the source of abuse.
What remains unexplained is whether new evidence drove the concession or whether Labour’s internal opposition proved decisive. The Home Secretary says the policy will still save “billions” but has not published a revised calculation substantiating that claim, and she declined to say whether the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, urged her to change course.
Great British PAC does not allege concealment. Its charge is simpler and harder to answer. A flagship policy was rewritten after internal objection, and the public is being asked to accept the savings on trust.
The questions the Home Secretary must answer
What evidence informed the change? Was any financial assessment carried out before Monday’s statement, and if so, why has it not been published? When will Parliament see the full costings? And what is the credible timetable for the rest of the reforms, which remain announced but unenacted?
Above all: can this Government deliver the immigration control it announces, or will every difficult decision be reversed the moment its own backbenchers object?
Great British PAC campaigns for control that is real, rules that are clear, and a Government that accounts for what its decisions cost the British taxpayer. On all three counts, the Home Secretary has yet to provide the evidence needed to justify her Government’s retreat.
She should publish the assessment, explain the retreat, and let Parliament judge both.
GREAT BRITISH PAC REACTION
Claire Bullivant, Chief Executive Officer of Great British PAC, said:
“This is yet another humiliating retreat from a Labour Government that pretends to tough on immigration but always loses its nerve the moment its own backbenchers start complaining.
“Shabana Mahmood promised the British public a tougher settlement system. Now, following a rebellion from within her own party, she has made a major concession affecting potentially hundreds of thousands of people, without publishing a proper assessment of what that decision will cost.
“What an extraordinary way to run a country. Labour can apparently find the political will to make sweeping promises, but not the courage to stand by them or the basic courtesy to show British taxpayers the figures.
“The Home Office has already produced projections running into billions of pounds for the lifetime fiscal costs associated with care worker settlement. Yet when the Government changes its policy, suddenly the public is expected to accept vague assurances about savings without being shown the calculations.
“This is not serious government. It is policymaking by panic, followed by an exercise in political damage limitation.
“And where is the Prime Minister in all this? Is Andy Burnham actually in charge of his Government’s immigration policy, or is it being dictated by the loudest voices on Labour’s backbenches?
“British taxpayers are not an unlimited cash machine, and immigration policy is not something ministers should rewrite every time they encounter political resistance.
“Great British PAC is demanding that Labour publishes the full revised financial assessment, explains precisely why it changed course and allows Parliament to scrutinise the consequences before the new rules take effect.
“The British people deserve a Government that means what it says, knows what its decisions cost and has the courage to govern. Right now, Labour is giving them no reason to believe they have one.”
