Rayner urges Labour to drop "disruptive" visa settlement overhaul as conference looms

Housing Secretary Angela Rayner has openly challenged Labour's own plans to rewrite the UK's visa settlement rules, warning that changing the terms for people already working in Britain would be unfair and "very disruptive". Her intervention, made in an interview with The Times, lands days before Labour's annual conference and exposes a widening split inside the party over the direction of immigration policy.

The proposals at the centre of the dispute would push most migrants from the current five-year route to permanent residency to a ten-year wait. Foreign workers sponsored on health and social care visas would face an even longer wait of 15 years. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has said the government will make a decision on the wider immigration overhaul by the end of the year.

Speaking to The Times, Rayner said she was worried about shifting "the goalposts years down the line" for people who arrived in the UK at the beginning of this decade expecting to qualify for permanent residence under the rules that applied when they came. "I do have concerns about that," she said, describing the potential change as "very disruptive" to the lives of those affected.

She singled out the impact on overseas care staff, arguing that the rules would hit foreign workers who "moved their lives here to look after our loved ones". Her objection is therefore not only procedural but moral: she is concerned that workers who have already committed to the UK, and who depend on settlement to secure their futures, could see the deal change after the fact.

The policy Rayner is criticising was inherited by Prime Minister Andy Burnham from his predecessor, Sir Keir Starmer. Rayner previously served as deputy prime minister under Starmer before being brought back into the cabinet by Burnham in July, a return that itself generated attention because it placed a former deputy back at the heart of government.

That background makes her intervention unusually pointed. As BBC political correspondents note, it is significant that a serving cabinet minister feels able to criticise an existing government proposal on the eve of the party's conference, even one carried over from the previous administration. Her comments form part of a growing push from parts of Labour to remove the retrospective elements of the plans.

Rayner has been consistent in her opposition. Back in June, she said proposals to change the rules retrospectively for migrants already working in the UK would be "wrong". She told The Times that Mahmood is aware of her position, adding that she has "not changed" her view since re-entering the cabinet.

Support for a rethink is coming from across the Labour party. York Central MP Rachael Maskell, speaking on the Today programme, said the proposal was "technically and morally" the "wrong set of values". She said it would punish "people who have come [to Britain] to serve faithfully and are then told that they have to wait another 10 years" to obtain British citizenship.

Organised labour has also pressed the government to soften the plans, and a letter to Mahmood jointly signed by dozens of Labour MPs at the start of the year described the proposals as "un-British". Trade unions have added their own weight to that pressure in recent weeks as the party approaches its conference gathering.

The government has not, however, abandoned the policy. Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Lisa Nandy rejected the "un-British" label, telling Radio 4's Today programme: "I don't think they are un-British because I don't think that we have ever had an automatic right to citizenship for most people who come to the UK from overseas." She said Mahmood was trying to balance respect for people "regardless of who they are or where they stand" with the need for "an immigration system that people can have confidence in".

Asked directly whether Labour could change its mind, Nandy pointed to the convention of keeping options open: "We always reserve the right to change our minds but we also will reserve the right to stick to our plans if we think we are getting them right." She said the government would not "change the rules of the game" in a way that unfairly disadvantages migrants who have contributed to the UK, and that it would "strike the right balance" between treating people "fairly and decently as human beings" and maintaining an asylum and immigration system the public can trust.

Her answers have been read as a signal that ministers are reconsidering their approach. Nandy could have mounted a full-throated defence of backdating the changes so they apply to foreign workers already in Britain, but she chose instead to emphasise the position of people who have "contributed" to the UK and the importance of fair treatment — language notably softer than an outright endorsement of retrospective application.

The political stakes of any retreat are considerable. If the government reverses course and exempts those who arrived from 2021, the large numbers of migrants who entered after that date would keep a quicker and easier route to settlement. That would create a clear dividing line with the Conservatives and Reform UK, both of which are likely to highlight the softening as evidence of weakness on immigration.

Mahmood herself has faced questioning on the timetable. Appearing before the Home Affairs Committee earlier this month, she said she was "very aware that a large group of people who arrived in 2022, absent any change, would qualify in February 2027" for permanent settlement. She added: "Later this year we will set out the new policy on settlement... as well as any transitional arrangements we might decide to implement."

That promise of "transitional arrangements" is now the focus of Labour's internal debate. With Rayner, Maskell, dozens of backbench signatories and a bloc of unions pressing for a rethink, and with Burnham having previously said Labour "would do well to listen to what Angela has to say", the conference hall could deliver a test of the prime minister's authority over a policy he did not originate.

For now, the government maintains that a decision is due by the end of the year. What remains unresolved is whether the settlement rules will be applied only to future arrivals, or whether the tens of thousands already working in health, social care and other sectors will face the longer wait after all.