Housing Secretary Rayner presses Labour to drop "goalpost" shifts on settlement rules

Housing Secretary Angela Rayner has used an interview with The Times to criticise her own party's proposals to rewrite the UK's settlement rules, warning that lengthening the route to permanent residency would be unfair to foreign workers who arrived in Britain expecting to settle under the rules in force when they came.

Speaking ahead of Labour's annual conference, the housing secretary said the plans announced by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood would amount to moving "the goalposts" on an expectation held by people who moved to the UK at the start of the decade. Under the proposals, most migrants would have to wait 10 years before qualifying for indefinite leave to remain, rather than the current five, while foreign workers holding health and social care visas would face an even longer 15-year wait.

Rayner said she was worried about people who arrived in Britain at the beginning of the 2020s, planning their families and careers around the existing five-year settlement framework, only to find the requirement extended years after they had committed to a life in the UK. She described the shift as "very disruptive" and said: "I do have concerns about that."

Particular concern was focused on overseas care workers, with the housing secretary pointing to foreign nationals who "moved their lives here to look after our loved ones". Her intervention targets one of the most politically sensitive elements of the package — the proposal to apply the longer waits to people already living and working in the country rather than only to future arrivals.

The remarks carry unusual weight because the policy was inherited by Prime Minister Andy Burnham from his predecessor, Sir Keir Starmer, and remains under active consideration. Rayner, who served as deputy prime minister under Starmer, was brought back into the cabinet by Burnham in July, making her a serving Labour minister publicly questioning a government proposal days before the party gathers for its annual gathering.

Officials close to the government's thinking regard the intervention as part of a widening internal revolt against the retrospective elements of the plan. Rayner has been consistent on the point: in June she said proposals to change the rules retrospectively for migrants already working in the UK would be "wrong", and she told The Times that Mahmood was aware of her position and that she had "not changed" her view since returning to the cabinet.

Burnham himself has previously indicated sympathy for her position. Before he became prime minister, he said he "understood" where Rayner was coming from and that Labour "would do well to listen to what Angela has to say". That apparent backing from the top of the party has encouraged other Labour voices to press for a rethink.

York Central MP Rachael Maskell, who also wants the home secretary to reconsider, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that "technically and morally" the proposals represented "the wrong set of values". She said they would penalise people who had come to Britain "to serve faithfully" and were then told they must wait another 10 years to obtain British citizenship.

Organised labour has joined the criticism. Trade unions have pressed the government in recent weeks to soften the plans, and a letter to Mahmood at the start of the year, jointly signed by dozens of Labour MPs, described the proposals as "un-British".

The government has not yet conceded the point. Lisa Nandy, the culture, media and sport secretary, rejected the "un-British" label, arguing on the Today programme that Britain has never granted an automatic right to citizenship to most people arriving 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 have confidence in".

Nandy did, however, leave the door open. Asked whether Labour could change its mind, she said: "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 disadvantaged migrants who had contributed to the UK, and would "strike the right balance" between treating people "fairly and decently as human beings" and maintaining an asylum and immigration system the public could rely on.

Analysts have read those comments as a signal that ministers are reconsidering the backdating. A full-throated defence of applying the longer waits to people already in the country — the principle of retrospective application — was conspicuously absent. Instead, the emphasis fell on fairness to those who have contributed, language that sits more comfortably with a partial retreat.

Any retreat would be visible. If the government limits the changes to arrivals from 2021 onwards, the large cohorts who entered under the current rules would keep a quicker, easier route to settlement — a point the Conservatives and Reform UK are expected to highlight as evidence of weakness, and one likely to feature heavily in conference rhetoric.

Mahmood has faced questions on the timing of the changes during an appearance before the Home Affairs Committee earlier this month. She said she was "very aware" that a large group of people who arrived in 2022 would, absent any change, qualify for permanent settlement in February 2027. She added that "later this year we will set out the new policy on settlement... as well as any transitional arrangements we might decide to implement" — a timetable that now falls due just weeks after Labour's conference, and after Rayner's challenge.