Home secretary to announce new immigration rules

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will make a statement on new immigration laws on Monday.

Measures set out last year included increasing the five-year wait for claiming indefinite leave to remain (ILR) - which gives people the right to settle, work and study in the UK and even claim benefits - and drew criticism from some Labour ministers.

Under the original plans, foreign care workers would potentially have a 15-year wait for settlement.

It is understood the proposals, initially announced in November 2025, could be watered down to exempt social care workers already living in Britain.

Housing Secretary Angela Rayner previously described applying the rules retrospectively as "un-British", particularly if they affected migrants already in the UK.

The home secretary initially set out the measures to delay settlement amid concerns over the wave of legal arrivals approaching eligibility in the wake of record post-Brexit net migration figures under the previous Tory government.

This could come at a lifetime cost to the taxpayer of £10 billion, Ms Mahmood said, pointing to figures from the Migration Advisory Committee.

Last week, Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he believed that ILR was a "right to be earned", but did not commit to bringing in all of Ms Mahmood’s reforms.

In a speech in March, Ms Mahmood said that between 2021 and 2024 the country experienced levels of migration it had previously seen over four decades.

She added that over the next five years, about 350,000 low-skilled workers and their dependants who arrived via the health and social care visa would qualify for settlement, gaining access to certain benefits.

The government's year-long consultation on the proposed reforms has drawn more than 200,000 responses.

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Reform Leader Nigel Farage said Ms Mahmood's plans were "rightly infuriating to most people who increasingly want net negative migration into Britain".

He said reform would scrap IRL "in its entirety and indeed rescind existing awards".

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said Ms Mahmood has been "forced to surrender to Angela Rayner" and the "open-borders Labour left".

In a post on X, he wrote: "[Mahmood] will now allow hundreds of thousands of low-wage and no-wage migrants to stay in the UK forever and claim benefits."

(c) Sky News 2026: Home secretary to announce new immigration rules