Shabana Mahmood admits her climbdown on foreign care workers' settlement will fall short of the £10bn savings she forecast
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.Mahmood's climbdown will reduce the number of people facing delayed settlement to just over 500,000, well down from nearly 800,000 under her original plans.
Mahmood conceded on BBC Radio 4's Today programme that her revised immigration plans will deliver savings "in the billions" — but refused to put a specific figure on the cost of watering down her original crackdown, which had projected £10bn in lifetime savings to taxpayers.
Under the revised plan, care workers earning at least £25,000 who arrived before May 2025 can apply for settlement after five years rather than 15.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp branded the reversal a "total capitulation" and put the cost of the U-turn at £10bn.
Farage warned the move could allow up to a quarter of a million migrants to obtain indefinite leave to remain and then citizenship before the next election.
