300,000 Carve-Out: Mahmood Exempts Care Workers from Her Own Crackdown
November 3, 2026 · Frisian News
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood exempted more than 282,000 foreign care workers from extended settlement waits she had announced as a crackdown, cutting the number facing longer qualifying periods to 500,000 out of 1.9 million.
More than 282,000 foreign care workers will keep their existing five-year path to indefinite leave to remain in Britain after Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood exempted the group from the restrictions she had billed as a historic immigration crackdown.
The carve-out applies to care workers who earned at least £25,000 a year, met their visa conditions, and arrived in the UK before May 2025, according to measures Mahmood set out in the Commons on Monday. The Guardian put the total benefiting, including dependants, at an estimated 280,000. The Daily Sceptic, citing the Mail, put the care worker figure at more than 282,000.
The exemption sits inside a broader retreat. Of the 1.9 million foreign nationals due to become eligible for settlement by 2030, only 500,000 will now wait longer than the current five years, Home Office figures show. That leaves 1.4 million on the original five-year timeline, according to the Guardian.
For those who do face longer waits, the standard qualifying period doubles from five years to ten. Workers earning under £50,000 face that doubling. High earners above £125,000 can settle in three years. Those above £50,271, along with doctors, nurses and teachers, keep the five-year route. Small boat arrivals who have not found work or study face a wait of up to 30 years, according to the BBC.
The climbdown came after a left-wing revolt inside Labour. Angela Rayner, who called the original measures "un-British" in March when she was a backbencher, has since been reappointed to Cabinet by Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Health unions pressed the Home Office to protect the social care sector. Burnham, who had endorsed the tougher approach during his Makerfield by-election campaign, backed the revised package.
Mahmood had quantified the cost of backing down. She had warned that a failure to implement her original blueprint would cause a "£10 billion drain on public finances" as foreign workers qualified for full access to welfare and social housing. She called any dilution "an affront to the idea of fairness within our society". On Monday, shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp repeated her own £10bn figure when condemning the reversal.
The Law Society said the retrospective nature of the changes "undermines the legal certainty that individuals, families and employers rely on". The CBI warned the partial exemption risked "being higher costs for the relatively small number of businesses using skilled worker visas, without addressing the problem the policy was originally designed to solve". Make UK said industries would "undoubtedly lose talent to countries that welcome skilled workers rather than moving the goalposts".
A policy its author priced at £10 billion of damage if softened has now been softened.
Published November 3, 2026 · Frisian News