Angela Rayner presses Labour to drop "goalpost" shift on visa settlement rules

Housing Secretary Angela Rayner has publicly questioned the government's plans to make it harder for foreign workers to gain permanent residence in the UK, warning that changing the rules retrospectively would be unfair to people who built their lives in Britain under the existing settlement framework. Her intervention lands days before Labour's annual conference, where immigration is expected to be a major battleground.

The proposals, which Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has been developing, would push the qualifying period for most migrants from five years to 10. Foreign workers holding health and social care visas would face an even longer wait of 15 years before they could apply to settle permanently. Mahmood has said a decision on the wider immigration overhaul is expected by the end of the year.

Speaking to the Times, Rayner said she was worried about moving "the goalposts years down the line" for people who arrived in the UK at the start of this decade in good faith, expecting to settle under the rules that applied when they came. She described a retrospective change as "very disruptive" and said plainly: "I do have concerns about that." She also stressed the human cost, pointing to the impact on foreign care workers who "moved their lives here to look after our loved ones" — a group that would see its route to settlement stretched furthest by the planned change.

Her comments carry particular weight because they amount to direct criticism of a policy her own government is currently carrying forward, albeit one inherited from the previous administration. Rayner served as deputy prime minister under Sir Keir Starmer and was brought back into the Cabinet by Prime Minister Andy Burnham in July. As such, she is a serving cabinet minister willing to go on the record against a live proposal from her own home secretary on the eve of the party's gathering in Liverpool — something that would have been far harder for a Starmer-era Labour figure to do.

Rayner has not made a secret of her opposition. Back in June, shortly after Burnham returned her to the Cabinet, she said that altering the rules for migrants already working in the UK would be "wrong". She told the Times that Mahmood is aware of her position and that her view has not shifted since re-entering government. The fact that she is repeating the criticism so publicly, with the party conference imminent, suggests she believes the window for changing course is still open.

Burnham himself echoed that sentiment before he became prime minister, saying in June that he "understood" where Rayner was coming from and that Labour "would do well to listen to what Angela has to say". That encouragement appears to have shaped the tone of the criticism from within the party's left flank, and other Labour figures have followed.

York Central MP Rachael Maskell, who wants the home secretary to rethink the plans entirely, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that what has been proposed was "technically and morally" the wrong set of values. She said the changes would penalise people who had come to Britain to serve faithfully only to be told they must wait another decade for a route to citizenship.

Momentum for a U-turn has been building for months. Trade unions have repeatedly pressed the government to soften the proposals, and a letter to Mahmood at the start of the year, jointly signed by dozens of Labour MPs, described the plans as "un-British". The episode has exposed a widening split inside Labour between those who see a long settlement period as a necessary correction to a broken system and those who regard it as a betrayal of the contribution made by people already working in the UK.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, however, rejected the "un-British" label. She told the Today programme that there had never been an automatic right to citizenship for most people arriving from overseas, and that Mahmood was attempting to balance respect for migrants regardless of their origin with an immigration system the public can have confidence in. Asked whether Labour could change its mind, she said the party "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".

Analysts have read Nandy's performance as a signal rather than a full-throated defence. She pointed instead to the principle of treating those who contribute to the UK fairly, and declined to back the idea of backdating the change so that it applies to people already in Britain. Had she wanted to shore up the original proposal on first principles, that was the moment to do it.

The consequences of a reversal would be substantial. If the transitional element were dropped for those who arrived from 2021 onwards — a group that includes a large cohort of post-pandemic arrivals, many in health and care roles — tens of thousands of people would qualify for settlement sooner and on easier terms. That would put Labour at odds with both the Conservatives and Reform UK, who have made tightening settlement rules a centrepiece of their own immigration messaging, and both parties would be likely to highlight the split.

Mahmood has herself acknowledged the scale of the issue. 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 would, absent any change, qualify for permanent settlement in February 2027. She added that later this year the government would set out the new settlement policy, "as well as any transitional arrangements we might decide to implement" — wording that leaves the door deliberately ajar.

With a decision due before the end of 2026 and the party conference looming, the argument Rayner is making is now being made publicly, by a Cabinet minister, in the PM's own government. The immediate question for Mahmood is whether the political cost of pressing ahead with a retrospective change outweighs the appeal of presenting Labour with the most restrictive settlement framework of any recent administration.