Shabana Mahmood admits her migrant care worker U-turn will push up the welfare bill and fall short of £10bn savings
Nigel Farage, who vowed to rescind citizenship grants that do not add value to Britain, as Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood also quietly dropped plans to bar newly settled migrants from claiming benefits.Andy Burnham (left), Mayor of Greater Manchester, with Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner — whose support for the care-worker climbdown means 282,000 of the 1.9 million migrants due to settle by 2030 will face no extra delay.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood conceded on Tuesday that her revised immigration settlement plans will increase the welfare bill and fall short of the £10bn saving she originally promised, yet refused to put a new figure on the cost. Under the climbdown announced Monday, foreign care workers earning at least £25,000 a year and meeting their visa conditions will qualify for settlement after five years, not the 15-year wait she had previously proposed. The number of people delayed from gaining permanent residency dropped from almost 800,000 to just over 500,000 as a result. Mahmood told the BBC savings would still run to "billions", but declined to specify how many.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp branded the reversal a "U-turn" costing taxpayers £10bn; Nigel Farage called it 'the beginning of the capitulation'.
Mahmood faced fire from her own side too, with Labour rebels calling the broader package 'cruel' and Diane Abbott warning it risked a repeat of the Windrush scandal.
A full impact assessment will only be published when the rules are laid before Parliament — meaning no one yet knows the true bill for the climbdown.
