Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood in Downing Street (Image: Getty)
Critics of Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s controversial immigration reforms have been challenged to explain how they would fund a £10billion benefits bombshell if her proposals are blocked. Former Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner is leading opposition to the tough changes.
But another former Labour deputy leader, Tom Watson, has now defended the plans and warned that failing to act “will cost the state nearly £10billion in benefits”. He also said that Reform UK would benefit if the Government promised immigration controls, but Labour MPs then blocked them. Lord Watson said: “When voters in the seats where Reform runs second – and there are more than 80 of them – see a Labour Government promising immigration control while a significant block of its own MPs fights to preserve the pipeline to settlement for low-paid workers who arrived during a Conservative immigration surge, they do not conclude that Labour has a principled position on fairness.
Civil war continues to rage in the Labour Party over plans to make it harder for people already in the UK to gain indefinite leave to remain, also known as settlement, which would make them eligible for social housing and benefits.
Ms Mahmood insists the changes are needed because 350,000 low-skilled workers and their dependents are about to qualify for settlement unless changes are made. She wants to change the rules so that many migrants must be in the UK for 10 years, up from five at the moment, to claim settled status. Some might need to wait 15 years.
But Labour backbenchers, including Ms Rayner, have accused the Home Office of “moving the goalposts” because the change will affect people who are already here. For example, a migrant worker who has been in the UK for four years might hope to gain settled status after one more year, but may now have to wait six years.
Lord Watson said in his email newsletter: “The critics of Mahmood’s proposals owe the public an honest answer to a simple question: what is their alternative?
“Because here is what the alternative actually means. By 2028, the Home Office projects 450,000 people will cross that qualifying threshold in a single year. Once they have Indefinite Leave to Remain, they have full access to the same welfare entitlements as existing British citizens.
“The Government’s own figures suggest that 196,000 care workers and their dependants, many of them low-paid, many without a clear route back into the labour market once their sponsorship ends, will cost the state nearly £10billion in benefits.
“Those care workers were recruited by Boris Johnson to plug a gap in our social care sector. Many of them answered that call in good faith, uprooted their families and built lives here.
“I have real sympathy for their individual situations, and I understand why MPs in constituencies with large affected communities feel a personal obligation to stand up for them. That is honourable.
“But the political logic of simply opposing Mahmood’s changes without offering a credible alternative is not honourable.
“It is evasive. You cannot simultaneously tell the public you take immigration control seriously and then fight to preserve a settlement pathway that the Home Office calculates will trigger a £10billion benefits bill at a moment when every spending commitment is being fought over tooth and nail.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is said to be considering watering down the Home Office plans. These reports have been denied by No 10 and the Home Office.
Labour MP Olivia Blake is among those opposing the changes. She set out her concerns in an article on the LabourList website this week.
Ms Blake said: “The Home Affairs Select Committee has found these changes will very likely increase child poverty. IPPR [the Institute for Public Policy Research] calculates 309,000 children will be affected.
“Barnardo’s told the Committee it is seeing children in No Recourse to Public Funds households experiencing malnutrition and stunted growth.
“Keeping low-paid migrant parents — who pay the same taxes as their British colleagues — on insecure visas for 15 years without Universal Credit directly undermines the Government’s child poverty strategy.
“The costs do not vanish – they are displaced onto local authorities already spending tens of millions supporting destitute families.
